


Glassheart Oath

by Rag



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Espionage, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Interrogation, Intrigue, Magic, Mild Sexual Content, Monsters, Multi, Narcissism, Polyamory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sexual Content, Shapeshifting, Sibling Bonding, Spies & Secret Agents, Threesome, Truth Spells, Underworld, mild dubcon, war (background)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-06-14 15:30:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 29,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15391839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rag/pseuds/Rag
Summary: Life is hard enough for a doppleganger who hates humans. Does Dave really have to fall in love with his marks, too?***10-14 update, all fics on haitus for the foreseeable future***





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> look at me, trying to make good titles and shit
> 
> so i have most of this planned out, more than usual! im very excited about it! hope you enjoy! :3

This gig sucks. The mayor drones on at you about insuring integrity of trade barriers between his tiny-ass village, Fort Bitchingsworth or something (Fort Bisworth), with all the enthusiasm of a sleepwalker. Worse, there are no fucking clocks in his office. This shit ostensibly ends at 3, but you have no chance of knowing when that might be. Who needs clocks? Not these chucklefucks. They have a fucking dank, poorly-lit, oversized closet with a fucking chalkboard and the speaker of the fucking century. You watch a rat skitter across the floor and into a hole in the wall, and it’s infinitely more entertaining than this horseshit.

“Aeryn, will you pull up the Villa yuSol documents?” the mayor says. You thank the dark lord that you were paying enough attention to not have to ask him to repeat himself. Your persona is very excited to be working in a fancy pantsy government building that totally isn’t a glorified sewer.

“Of course, Mayor Shankson.” You open your cloth bag and retrieve the folded documents, handing them to him. He takes them, makes a gross leer at your fine stackage, then turns back and starts droning on and on and on. The mayor is a boring, gross old fuck. You couldn’t get in as an upstart young man, but walk in as a barely-adult girl with farming-tanned skin and some serious fucking knockers (like, you’re talking A-grade boobs. His wife was stacked to the ceiling, so you spared no fucking expense)? He was _sure_ they could find something for you to do.

If you weren’t so deeply ambivalent about the above-ground, you’d be worried that their government is run by such vulnerable halfwits. Pretty young girl from out of town is like, espionage 101. But you don’t actually give a fuck.

His droning continues. You rue the fact that Roxanne only does lump payments upon completion. Maybe you could talk with her about this if/when it ever ends. Some jobs require a special touch. Some jobs can’t be rushed. _Do some jobs require you to be paid for getting drunk with your friends for days on end? For purposes of reconnaissance?_ she’d counter. Yeah, you won’t bother. But could he _please_ get to the beef. You’ve been working under him for fucking _months_ at this point. You’re going so deep into this Aeryn chick you’re starting to forget what you look like. The mayor has been letting you in on more and more, slowly, but never anything that you could use. _Get the valuables_ , Roxanne had said. Little does Roxanne know that above-ground society is just an excuse to waste time, and by god they’re gonna prove it to you.

“What I’m about to say cannot leave this room. Do you all understand that?” You perk up at that. Here we go. Here we it comes. About fucking time. “Aeryn?”

“Yes, sir, I understand.” You pretend to be nervously considering something. “I’d be happy to sign an oath of confidentiality? If you want?”

He chuckles. Oh, Aeryn, you little simpleton! “No, no, that won’t be necessary. Just know that this is confidential material. Don’t go telling your friends at the tavern, lass.”

Your smile doesn’t kill your soul ‘cuz you’re a goddamn professional. “Thank you, sir. I won’t.”

And then the dumb fuck just tells you, the minister of trade, and the captain of the guard where the trade routes are this month. Nice. For the first time since you started this gig, your emotions (relief) threaten to spill over. It’s finally fucking over. Just like that. Tonight, you shift back, go home, report the routes, and never fucking go back.

Well, you probably don’t do that. You’ll probably stick around at least another month to make sure that those routes are real and not just a trap to suss out if you’re a spy. Roxanne would probably want to be thorough. She’s boring like that. But hey, now you have a fucking time limit on this shit.

“Aeryn, I’m only telling you this because I intend to involve you in the oversight of some of these routes from now on. You’ll be in charge of the correspondence.”

You smile proudly. Yeah, he thinks you’re a spy. This is 100% a trap to see what happens to these routes. Why the fuck did you try a guy first. That probably tipped him off. Two people with out-of-town accents looking for work in the same week? Moron. You should have gathered the intel first, see what he liked before you assumed. Maybe you’d be done with this shit a month earlier.

It’s fine, though. You can last another month (ughhhhh) or two ( _ughhhh_ ). This is infinitely more boring than the active robbing missions, but you need to stay in Roxanne’s favor, and quitting a job halfway because it’s too lame is a lightning quick way to not do that.

You wish, once again, that the Mayor wasn’t allergic to fucking clocks, and you buckle in for more of this shit.

*

The tavern is loud with music and too many people’s conversations. It smells like sweat, beer, and sweetened smoke. People used to give you/Aerys shit when you first started coming here as her. This is no place for a cute little thing like you. They stopped after Aerys kicked a few of their asses. It’s cute what humans think they can get away with. You’re so glad you’re not one of them anymore.

You find Rose sitting at a table by herself with two beers. The one she’s drinking from keeps refilling itself. Your really hope she’s worked that out with the bartender, and isn’t just boldly fucking stealing beer through enchantment. You plop next to her. She slides you the other glass.

“Shit, for me? You’re too sweet.”

She looks away, uncomfortable. “We’ve had an… intuition that you’ve made progress today,” she says quietly. “It’s a reward from my mother.”

You grimace. The fact that Roxanne can somehow keep tabs on you isn’t your _favorite_ thing in the world. It’s not Rose’s, either. There have been a few times where, somehow, she’s been outside of Roxanne’s sphere of influence, and she’s told you things like, _you’re being monitored_ and _you know she’s trying to pit us against each other to see which of us is more capable? And it’s horseshit and I’m not playing along?_ What she doesn’t tell you is how the fuck you’re being monitored. _If I told you that, you’d disable it, wouldn’t you? And where would that leave me?_ Blah blah caring about succession or whatever (it makes sense, you really can’t blame her).

“Oh, cool.” Free beer is free beer, ultimately, so you drink it. Of course it’s all imbued with some spell or something, and hits you a lot stronger than a normal drink would.  It tastes like candied grapefruits and pine needles, among other things.

“You’re not stealing from the ale batch with your witchy wiles, are you?”

Rose wiggles her eyebrows and takes another sip. It fills back up.

“Rose. I like this tavern.” You do. The town is a tiny little shithole, but the tavern is lively and fun and usually pretty full. Plenty of people come here between travels from all over. It’s the only breath of life you get here.

“They’re not gonna catch ‘s.”

“Us? Who is us? There’s no us in this-”

Rose looks at your glass, and the quarter empty fills back up from the bottom.

“As long as we aren’t too obvious about it. Look ‘round. Look at all these plebians. They don’t have time to notice this.”

She seems tenser than usual, and a little more eager to hit the endless beer hard. “You okay?”

“I’m stellar. Finally planted the seed of love letters in this charming gentleman’s mind, should be a matter of time.” She looks at you. “We might finish up at the same time, Da- the fuck is your name? Aaron?”

“Aerys, Rose, holy shit. How drunk are you right now?”

“Oh my god, Dave-“

“Aerys.”

“Arees, okay, I just. Listen. This man is more than a little unpleasant. You know how I convinced him to write a love letter?”

“Tell me.”

“His side girl _isn’t putting out_ , as he says, _because she’s on her period or something_ -“

“Oh my God.”

“So I was like,” she pitches her voice down, “ _you know what bitches like? Love letters. Just write some sappy bullshit. Copy it from a book if you gotta.”_

“Oh my _God_.”

“Right. Right. I’m dying inside a little more with each passing day. And that’s what convinced him.” She shakes her head. “Dave, I’m-“

“Aerys.”

“Shit.” She takes another sip. “I think Kossuth himself might literally be licking at my soul with his tongues of flame each day I spend with this drivel of sentience.”

You pat her back awkwardly because you need to comfort her somehow. “Pretty sure the elder gods aren’t waking from their slumber just to punish you for playing creep for a few weeks though.”

“My soul, though. It’s damage that can’t be undone.”

You want to ask her how serious she is, but from experience it’s a bad fucking idea to actually push into _how are you doing emotionally_. There’s bitching about especially stupid humans, and there’s admitting that you’re spread a little too thin. Poking at second thing ensures that you piss her off and spend the rest of the night alone.

“Well, I mean, he’s probably writing that letter right the fuck now, right? Dude wants some honey.”

“Goodness.. Could this be the last day? Will Raphael be retired tomorrow? Could I be so lucky?”

“Yeah, maybe. Use your peeky powers and find out.”

She snorts and gives you a derisive look. “That’s cheating.”

“Literally, what does that even mean.” You honestly don’t know. She has fucking future sight, but she always seems hesitant to use it outside of emergencies. You can’t begin to guess why. She never explains.

There’s a lot you don’t know. Rose was raised in this life, but you just popped in a few years ago. And like, thank God she took a liking to you, because you’d probably have gotten yourself exiled into the woods at this point without her helping you along. Shapeshifting into a bear to catch salmon in the river. Fuck, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. You wouldn’t have to put up with Mayor Whatshisfuck staring at your tits anymore. No, it would probably suck, because if you were a bear it’d be harder to hang out with Rose. And Rose is the fucking best.

“I’m sorry, maybe someday I can… but it’s far too complicated for me in my current state…” Rose trails off. “Oh, hello.”

You follow her eyes and see a girl requesting the zither from the minstrel. The guy hands it to her. She starts playing something fast and fun. Oh, the minstrel isn’t too hard to look at, either. The idea of legitimately hitting on anyone as Aerys makes your skeleton want to leave your body, but, in another life, in another world, maybe. He has a mass of thick, curly red hair, a face full of freckles, toned body, his skin littered with scars, and a big, goofy smile. And he can seriously play.

“You wanna go for it?” you ask her.

“Pft.” Rose looks away and takes another drink. Doesn’t even consider it.

“Dude, come on, go for it.”

“She probably has a husband.”

“She’s a musician performing at a bar.”

Rose snorts into her glass. “Dave, oh my God.” She mutters something under her breath and finishes her drink. It stays finished. Canceling the spell, nice.

“Shit, are you really gonna go for it? I can wingman. Hey, meet my friend, she’s super cool and just stole like 40 gold coins’ worth of booze from this bar.”

“Don’t you dare. I just can’t drink more because I _have_ to be up early to intercept that disgusting letter. Ugh, I’ll probably have to read it.”

“Nah, you could just play as the mistress’ maid and nab it later.”

She smirks and seems to consider it. “You’re the worst influence. No. I’m not doing that. That adds more confusion into the mix. Reduce confusion and uncontrolled variables.”

“Okay, Mom.”

“I can’t stop you from refusing to learn our ways, but the consequences of indulgifyi-indulging trivialities like that could be deadly for you some day. You gotta stay _focused_.”

You’re torn, because she’s kind of hilarious like this, but you wish she wouldn’t hit the shit as hard as she does. It’s getting kind of alarming. But that’s her own business, and she’s nowhere near as bad as her mom at this point. That bitch is crazy. You’re also torn with a little of that gooey stupid feelings shit because she cares about your well-being. What the fuck. Part of you has been convinced it’s a trick for the last year since you met her, but she hasn’t betrayed you yet. Even put her ass on the line a few times when you fucked up towards the start. You kind of owe her your life, even if she refuses to accept that as true.

The chick’s song wraps up. People applaud and ask for an encore. She doesn’t give one.

“Any idea how much longer your gig will take?” Rose asks you.

“A month or two, probably.”

“And then you get released for a month?”

“Yeah, shit. I can’t wait.” You lower your voice. “This fucker keeps staring at my buns every fucking chance he gets. Thinks he’s being subtle, too. I’m gonna piss in his cheese stores.”

Rose gives you a look you can’t read. It’s probably mostly her being drunk off her ass.

“You’ll invite me for the reckoning.”

“Of course.”

“Excellent. Now, if we go closer to the minstrels, will you promise to not ‘make it weird,’ as you might say, with the musician?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“I won’t ‘make it weird’ with the minstrel,” she offers. Goddamnit.

“Deal.”

*

The mayor thing was totally a trap.

You report your findings to Roxanne that weekend. You report your suspicions. Roxanne sends one of her hilarious small animal shifting specialists to check the goods and, yep, just a fucking wagon full of armed guards. Turns out the Mayor isn’t a _total_ fucking dunce. Imagine that. You’re hurt. You’re slain. How could the Mayor be so distrustful of _you_ , charming, hapless Aerys of the farmland, goddess of the tavern? You pulled of your disguise flawlessly. You’ve spent so much time thinking about Aerys that you have a full-ass backstory, complete with the first time she saw a river, her feelings on various livestock, a steamy summertime romance between her and the town heartthrob. Roxanne didn’t give you any specifications for your character except that she had to have a slight yuLun accent. Everything else was up to you. Everything else was just fuckin’ thrown in your lap. Figure it out, kid.

Roxanne is pleased with your work.

 _Excelent thinking darling,_ her note says, barely fucking legible. Apparently she’s been hitting the demonic ichor pretty hard lately. Rose rues the fact that she wanted her gig to end. Says she karmically cursed herself. (That’s sarcasm, karma is a fake human concept designed to impose sense on a senseless world. Her words.) In the few times a week you see her, at a bar or in a busy marketplace, she begs you to keep an ear out for something juicy to start working on to get her out of her mom’s creepy lair.

_Now just keep workin and geting the dates until we find goodies. xoxo_

It could be anywhere up to a year, but realistically it’s only going to be a few more months at most. Which is still pretty fucking long. You’re really, _really_ pushing how long you can stomach this. Shifting into anything but your base state feels a little uncomfortable, but women and animals are worse than men, you feel _wrong_ and it gets worse the longer it goes.

You shift back into your natural form sometimes when you’re completely alone. Like, full natural base state, do not pass go, do not run into literally anyone because they _will_ kill you, because you’re a heinous monster. Like, you think you look pretty cool, but you understand why people scream in terror. You’re usually chill in a more adult version of the human you were growing up, but when you’ve been undercover as a buxom young lass for so long, you _need_ the globby guy.

This is by far the longest gig you’ve ever taken. Roxanne is probably stretching your muscles out to make you a better servant.

It seems like Rose can tell how much you hate this. You wonder if that’s why she calls you Dave as much as she does. Even if she only does it in private rooms or loud bars, it’s hideously unprofessional. But it does make you feel better.

You never tell her explicitly. She’d tell you to deal with it and she wouldn’t be wrong. You chose to do this. You want to keep working for this wacky underground world. You’re not particularly interested in power, but you want enough where you don’t have to worry about getting exiled over something dumb. Seeing this through gets you closer to that.

*

Somehow, you manage. You keep yourself chipper and charming until finally, finally, they start sending actual goods instead of armed guards, and they start actually allowing your mail to go through instead of intercepting it and ensuring you’re not writing declarations of war. That means you can intercept the next batch two days later. And that means all you need to do is wait until Roxanne or Rose pulls you back.

The summons comes from Rose in the middle of the night. She knocks on your door quietly, but you bolt awake.

“What? Who is it?”

“You can shift out of her, your job’s done.”

You slowly start to relax. It’s nice of Rose to not comment on the fact that you’re fucking hyperventilating. She’s chill like that. It’s part of your unspoken agreement -- she doesn’t ask where you came from, and you don’t ask her how/if she tolerates living under Roxanne’s roof without losing her fucking mind.

Shifting out of Aerys is like shucking off a fucking vinyl suit. It’s such a fucking relief that you do it before you even start to ask questions. But you can’t stave them off while you pack your bags. As much as you just want to be done with this, you have to be a good little asskiss and make sure.

“Is she aware that I could get info for more than one shipment? Like, we could keep tapping this at least another month. If I leave now it’ll be suspicious as fuck.”

Rose’s voice is devoid of emotion. “There’s an ongoing war with yuLun. They’ll think you were a spy for it. She also wanted you to know that this was a test of your abilities, and the material wealth available from this town is negligible to her.”

You shudder. You hate when Roxanne does this shit, preempts your concerns far in advance but only lets you know if you think to ask. She knew you would ask that, she wanted Rose to have an answer, she wanted you to know she would know what you think, because she wants you to know she’s in charge.

“Did she read my mind with her little spy device?”

Rose watches you pack impassionedly. She’s remarkably sober for this time of night. Shye doesn’t respond to your question. Fine, cool, off limits.

“Why are you sober?”

“I have to bring you back to Roxanne’s lair. She wants to check in with you about your next mission.”

“What, right now?”

“Now.”

“But my vacation,” you whine.

“You’ll get your vacation.” She looks off, a mixture of sadness and annoyance on her face. “Don’t be surprised if it’s less than promised.”

“What the fuck.”

“She’s in a bitchy mood.”

“What the fuck.”

“You’ll still get some time, don’t worry. Just maybe not as much as she promised.” She sighs. “Do you think you could hurry this along? A reeking small-town drifter inn isn’t actually my idea of a good time.”

“Yeah, yeah, get off my back.” You speed up your packing. “Why the fuck does she need to meet now? Could it not wait until the morning?”

Rose shakes her head. She has an exhausted, dead look in her eyes. “She’s more than a little intoxicated. Be prepared to need a translator for her.”

“Oh, great.”

“I’ll be the translator. I’m fluent in drunk bitch.”

You finish packing and zip your bags, and you force yourself not to comment on that because every response you can think of is way more genuine than she’d want to deal with. You shapeshift yourself a sweet set of pecs to carry the bag and open the window.

“Lead the way, dude.”

She perks up. “Right. Let’s pop off.”

She shifts into a bird and lands on the ground before shifting back to human. You watch the little ball of feathers morph into a lavender-clad lump of Rose and laugh. She looks up, sees you laughing, and flicks you off. You cast a levitation spell on yourself, hope it takes, and jump out the window.


	2. Chapter 2

-1 year earlier-

You weren’t exactly almost dead when Rose found you, but you weren’t doing that much better. You shifted into a teenager when people were around, a harmless boy when you needed to steal some food, and into an old, scraggly man when you wanted some rest in a dark alley. You shifted into a demon when this or that group of fucks tried to mess with you. In retrospect, rumors of the shapeshifting demon lurking in the alleys was probably how Rose found you. Probably wasn’t much of a stretch that it was a doppleganger. Probably wasn’t much of a hunt to find you. At the time, it seemed like there was a magical, insidious underworld with ears everywhere, eyes watching everything. Roxanne’s whole deal was a lot more impressive, and intimidating, when you were first exposed to it.

So, you were putzing about, all scared and shit, whatever. Rose found you in an alley.

To her credit, she tried to be chill. She was something that you now recognize as Rose Soothing. The thing is, she was raised by a doppleganger monarch who gets bored she doesn't have enough mind games running at any one time. So, she tapped a silver-plated fingernail against the ground next to your head, and ok you thought it was a knife and grabbed your things and fled multiple blocks, and she had to chase you down over the course of the next few days.

Eventually, she got you alone _and_ awake. You thought she was some kind of police. She shapeshifted into her base form, and you immediately recognized her as whatever the fuck you were.

“If you want to come with me, maybe I can help find you somewhere you don’t have to worry about chamber pots being emptied on your head. We can probably get you cleaned off, too.”

“Why?”

“We’re always looking for more people like us.”

That seemed like it might be a trap. You weighed that against how long you could possibly go on the street, shifting around, stealing every meal and going to bed hungry most nights, before you starved to death or got burned as a demon. You went with her.

"By the way, to be clear, no one dumped a chamber pot on me."

"Are you positive about that?"

*

She took you to a less populated part of town. As in, less populated than the stinky alley you were sleeping in. There were a few houses, and you could just barely see the start of the farming district from the dim light of a streetlamp a few blocks away.

“So, this is the part where someone hits me over the head and y’all sell me into a sex cult?”

“Something like that,” she said. You could see a tiny light about an acre away, and Rose headed towards it. You followed her into the darkness. You walked not 30 feet before you started tripping. You heard her stop walking.

“Uh, hey?” you asked.

“Are you drunk?” she said, incredulous. “Shift your eyes into something with dark vision.”

Oh. You imagined a cat, felt the disconcerting tingle of change shifting through your eye goo. When you opened your eyes again, you could see everything around you like it was twilight.

“Oh, shit, this is awesome.”

“Have you really _never_ done that before?”

“Shit, excuse me, not all of us had a fuckin’ lifetime to get used to being a shapeshifting aberration.”

She started walking again. You picked up your pace and followed her. You didn’t like how long she let your statement hang in the air before responding. Did you say something fucked up? You probably said something fucked up. You kinda just called this stranger an aberration, didn’t you. Like, she _was_ an abberation. But you can’t just _say_ that to people without knowing how they feel about it. As if you needed to stack the deck any farther against you in this situation. Nice on, Dave.

“How long have you been able to access your doppleganger form?” she finally asked.

That caught you off guard. “Uh. A while," you lied. It sounded fake to you. You've never been great at lying off-the-cuff.

You could feel her raise her eyebrows like a snarky broad. You didn’t comment further, you didn’t want to get into it. Up ahead of you, you could finally make out that the light was coming from the window of a house that stood in a line of other houses just like it. That helped you relax a little. If this was a trap, it wouldn’t be in the middle of a town, right? Probably?

“Well, I hope a while is long enough for this.”

“What?”

She didn’t respond.

“What?”

Nothing.

“What’s even your name? We’re kinda far in this process to not have the names thing going. Like, hey, I’m Dave, nice to meet you.”

“Dave? Is that really your name?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Rose.”

“Cool.”

“Do you have a last name?”

“Nope,” you lied. She stopped and looked over her shoulder at you, _are you serious right now?_ plain in her eyes. “What, you’ve never heard of someone without a last name? Shit happens all the time. Dave Noname. It’s on my records and everything.”

“What a coincidence,” she said flatly. “Me too. So we can just use our first names into perpetuity forever, in every dealing we ever have together.”

Damn it. Fuck it, you didn’t need her last name.

You eventually reached the house. She turned back at you. “Repeat after me,” she said, and changed. To this day, you’re still not used to seeing her do this shit, but at the time? The first time you saw it? You screamed, a little. Anyone would. She straight-up started disintegrating. Her head sunk in on itself, her limbs stretched towards the ground and lost shape. She fell into a puddle of blackish, brownish, greyish goo, then slowly slid under the crack beneath the door.

It took you a few minutes to be able to think again. That’s when you noticed that the door had no handle.

“Come on," she said, her voice distorted through the thick door, "the entrance to our headquarters is just past here.”

Cool. Great. All you had to do was… turn into a puddle of fucking goo. Could you even _do_ that? Could you come back from that? Could you reconstitute? Well, fuck it, there was only one way to find out.

Turns out, you could do it.

Rose was/is merciless. You needed a few minutes to shake off the memory of having absolutely no bones, being a mass of skin, feeling every particle of stone and dirt on half of your flesh. The disconcerting feeling of moving through shifting part of your goo blob, pulling it forward and allowing the rest of you to follow forward, like a worm.

“Great job,” she said flatly, and walked away.

“I think I have gravel in my taint.”

“You’d better shake it out,” she said. “That can poison you.”

“What? No it can’t.”

“No? Are you sure?”

“Uh.”

She led you through the dimly-lit, blank stone room, and then down a rusted metal ladder. Then through a few more halls. She cast a  light spell, which made it a lot easier to see. You saw a returning glow, pink to Rose’s lavender, a few acres down the wet, dank, earthy tunnel.

“What the literal fuck is this?”

“My mother has a flair for the dramatic.”

“This is your mom’s?”

“Unfortunately. She’s in charge of the doppleganger network of this city.”

“Woah. That’s a thing? Apparently that’s a thing.”

"Yes. It’s _a thing_ , and hopefully it’ll get you some work and somewhere nice to sleep.”

“You take in stray dopps a lot?”

She didn’t answer that. All you could hear is the wet squelching of your boots on the ground. Some part of your mind said that this situation was fucking stupid dangerous, but something in you really, really trusted Rose. Which was probably crazy-talk. She was the first person who was nice to you in the last… ever, huh. Well, anyways, you thought that was probably clouding your vision, and you were just so thirsty to have a bed again. Luckily, you reached Roxanne before you psyched yourself out and ran away screaming.

“Mother, here he is.”

“Oh, thank you, Rosey baby!” a low, bubbling woman’s voice said.

Rose tensed, then walked into the darkness.

“Lights… up!” Pink-flame torches started to burn around you, but they weren’t hot. It took your eyes a few seconds to adjust to all the new light, and then you saw Roxanne for the first time.

She was in her doppleganger form. She was the same ruddy brown-grey as you were naturally, but fucking massive. Impossibly huge. Rose eventually told you that it’s because she drinks so much demonic ichor. Iit makes her bigger and stronger than her natural state, allows her to keep a tighter grip on her network. It also gets her higher than a fucking kite, and she drinks significantly more than she needs to. Instead of arms and legs for limbs, she had a writhing mass of thick tendrils. She still had a face, somehow, and it smiled at you.

“Hello,” she crooned, with a mouth that looked more like a hole.

“H-hey.”

“You are _just_ precious, aren’t you?” One of her tendrils reached out towards you. You sidestepped it. “Oh, interesting.” She pulled her hand… tendril back. “Who is your father?”

That felt like getting smacked, and it probably showed like an open book on your face.

“Don’t have one.”

Her smile waned. “What’s your name?”

“Dave.”

“Last name?”

“Who’s asking?”

Her smile completely died. “Dave," she said, "I like a little spunk in my recruits. A _little_.” You swallowed. You were probably being stupid. Rose was gaping at you like you were a talking frog. “You do want to be a recruit for me, don’t you? I can’t imagine why else you’d come so far into my lair.”

If there was one thing you were good at at that point in your life, it was sucking it up just a little too late. “Yes, ma’am. Sorry for my rudeness.”

“Your name, Dave.”

“Strider.”

Her smile came back, beaming in full force. She started to glow softly from within, a little whitish yellow tint to her grey. “Oh, Derrick’s boy!” You didn’t cringe. You didn’t want to know how the fuck she knew your dad. Lucky for you, she didn’t explain, just smiled her creepy smile. “Well, I’ll be sure to make room for you, then. And a fancy-pants position. You can work with Rose!”

Rose turned to face her mom. “I’d like to request a private meeting with you first,” she stuttered out.

“Denied! You can train him up real good, like, the best. Start teaching him shifty stuff, I’ll get a nice lil' starter gig drafted up for him.”

"Yes, mother," she said tightly.

Roxanne gave her more instructions - where you'd be living, what she would teach you and in what order. You were too overwhelmed to take much of it in.

"Dave, it was a delight meeting you! See you around, babes!" Roxanne said, and she went up in a literal puff of pink smoke. You screamed a little.

Rose stared at the smoke. "Very professional. Setting a shining example for the trainee. Truly. Babes." She turned to you and sighed. "Follow me."

Rose didn't say another word to you as she brought you to your new home. She gave you a stiff  _goodbye_ and left you to scope the place out.

It was a lot nicer than the place you grew up in, and significantly nicer than the streets, what with the whole  _not having to watch your back constantly_ thing. You were used to a fair amount of that, but your dad did leave  _sometimes_. On the street? Any moment could suck. _Any_ moment. But not in your cushy new single room house, with a straw bed, a single window, and a wooden shelf with half its planks cracked. That was fine, you didn't have much shit to fill it with anyways. Any shit, really. You kind of had to leave with just the clothes you were wearing and the few coins and seeds you had in your pocket. You took those out, put them on the shelf. Shit was decorated. Shit was dowright cozy. You laid down and got the best sleep you'd had in months.

*

Shit was stiff with Rose for a while. She didn't like being made to drop literally everything she was doing to train you, and you didn't blame her. She started coming around to you when you offered her a deal - she could do her own thing for a few hours, and you'd just practice shit on your own without her, and Roxanne never had to know any better. This was before she started bugging you. That came a few months later. 

Rose didn't trust you at first. She squinted. "I hope you know that I have several ways to make your life worse than hell if you double-cross me."

And there was another terrifying taste of what the Roxanne life was doing to her. "Shit, I'm sure you do. Also consider: spending less time with the grumpy, glaring heiress who hates being here is better for both of us."

Her eyebrows shot up and she laughed, barely. "I have to admit you're right, there."

She probably pulled some weird doppy shit to make sure you didn't rat her out, and she probably kept doing that for a while. You pretty quickly got the impression that 1) she wasn't used to having friends and 2) she wasn't used to talking to people who didn't want to politically undermine her. Well, you weren't used to friends, either. The two of you fucked-up freaks circled the drain of actually finding each other pretty cool for a few months before admitting it was a thing and hanging out in your free time.

*

-Present day-

The whole Roxanne meeting weirded you out. Lots of shit weirded you out. Like how she started bugging you shortly after you and Rose started hanging out. Or how she seemed to like pitting you and Rose against each other. She didn’t pit Rose against anyone else. It weirded you out until the subsconscious piece of the puzzle wormed its way into your conscious, that possibly, maybe, _she_ was your mom. That’d explain where the doppleganger shit came from, it’d explain why she was so interested in _helping you blossom_ (her creepy words), and so invested in driving some kind of wedge between you and her perfect little heiress.

That would make Rose your sister. You wish your fuck of a dad bothered to keep track of your birthday if for no other reason than you’re curious if you’d be twins or just brother and sister. But, whatever.

You never talk about it, but you’re pretty sure she realizes it, too. But it’d be weird to talk about. _Hey, you know how we might be related, or am I just imagining that, anyways._ Nah. Pass. It’d probably be dangerous to know. You don’t know enough about doppleganger society to know if this kind of thing would fly if it was in the open. So, you’re fine keeping it on the “maybe” burner forever.

Sister or not, Rose is the best friend you’ve ever had. You’re really excited about the next month. The two of you are going to wreak havoc on a city and then never been seen in it again. It’ll be great. Rose has the best ideas of shit to do, infiltrating the coolest circles, finding the best pockets of other weird creatures you never knew existed before. Maybe she’ll hook you up with that temporal realm-traveling half-beholder drug dealer again. Or, shit, maybe she’ll finally show you the village of catfolk she keeps teasing you with. You’re only half convinced it’s real. Could anything so good be real? You need _proof_.

Which is why you’re kind of fucking pissed when Roxanne tells you that you’re shipping out next fucking week to the other side of the country, without Rose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know what i learned about the writing process through this chapter? the importance of chronology. bottoms up for learning things


	3. Chapter 3

Roxanne’s throne room is creepy enough without her flip flopping around from form to form in her seat, but here you are, listening to her barely-sensical ramblings. Half performance review, half trailing into anecdotes from her mysterious past, entirely too hard to follow.

She calls her underground network the Biznaz District. There are entrances set up all across the city. The one that Rose showed you that first day led directly to Roxanne’s chambers, which are in the northernmost spoke of the series of tunnels. There are other entrances all over the city -- restaurant bathrooms, in-network homes, and sewers. You can use any of them whenever you want, as long as no one sees you shift.

Rose drew the structure of the Biznaz District for you at one point. It reminded you of stalks of rosemary on a stem. Branching hallways led to central hubs that were ostensibly for trading, networking, bartering, eating, drinking, whatever you needed when you didn’t want to deal with humans. Humans, unfortunately, made far better beer. Humans also existed in numbers greater than 40, and tended not to be vicious, misanthropic recluses, at least not _most_ of the time. Solid one-up on the doppleganger community.

The unfortunate thing about the Biznaz District, and the reason you spend next to none of your time there, is that place is usually a ghost town. People mostly come here to sleep. The hallways are sparsely filled with sounds of slowly dripping water from the ceilings, scampering mice and bugs, and not much else. And, what few non-Rose dopplegangers you’ve met have tried to rob you. Sometimes violently. You keep to yourself now.

From those hubs are more branched hallways, which led to living quarters. The quarters, at least, are decked out with enchantments that make them feel warm and cozy. When you walked into one of Roxanne’s quarters, you stepped out of a literal hole that was dug into the ground in the middle of the farming district and into a comfortable little room.

The living chambers are enchanted to be inviting, but Roxanne’s chambers are not. Roxanne seems to enjoy giving orders from her gigantic metal chair (how she got it down here, Rose refuses to tell you) in the dank, wet, dripping throne room. Her pale pink sconces burn as brightly as the two torches that she keeps on opposite sides of her. They illuminate some of her trophies - taxidermized animals, jeweled goblets, hand-carved statues of wizards, among other weird things. The magic flames also cast a pale pink light on her skin, and it glows off of her strange, mis-formed teeth when she smiles at you.

“Okay, so’s, let’s get to the meat here.” Roxanne doesn’t seem to be in control of her form. At the moment, she looks a little bit like chocolate that’s been left in the sun and started to melt. It grows hair, and the hair melts into the mess. “Good job with the Mayz, Davey.” You think she might wink at you, but she’s too fucked up. You can’t tell if that was an eye or just a chunk of poorly-formed hair. Roxanne gives you the fucking creeps.

“Thank you.”

“Real good job. Nice buxom lass.” Roxanne gives you the _fucking_ _creeps_. You don’t blink and you try not to move. You’ve gotten enough of a picture of her shining character to know she loves making people squirm. “Anywayses, we got your next job. You ready?”

No, you’re not ready. You’re ready for your payment and month allotted time away from Roxanne’s shit. “Uh, the payment? Ma’am?”

She laughs. “You’ll get it, don’t worry! What kinda lame overlord would shun payments? It’d cause a big ol’ revolt with my best spies-in-training. And you know what’d happen then? I’d have to _kill_ my best trainees! And get new ones!” She talks about this the same way she talks about the weather. Has she ever actually had to do something like that? You could see it. You could also see her making this up to fuck with you. “That takes so much _time_ and _effort._ Dave, no, that’d be stupid.”

You take a deep breath. She never gets easier to deal with. You don’t know how Rose is as reasonable as she is, dealing with this every day. Your only see Roxanne a few times a month. Your emotions are tamped down by only vague suspicions that she’s related to you. Rose, on the other hand. Rose knows that’s her mom, and Rose goes back to this _every day_ when she’s not on an extended mission. Rose is watching all this as the heiress to Roxanne’s weird underworld township of Cranford or whatever. She rubs her temples and looks away, mortified.

“You got your next gig. When you want it. You got free time, too, don’ worry. Two whole weeks.” She holds up two fingers, just in case there was any doubt in your mind that she just decided to cut your time off in half.

“I didn’t go to university, but I reckon that two is less than four, which is what you-“

“Two. Weeks,” she says slowly, making you stop and wait for her. “Listen. You get the rest later, okay? Like, times two. So, like, that’ll be six! For free! You can follow that math, right? Two, times two, plus two. Six.” She doesn’t give you time to respond. “It’s just, we can’t let this thing sit any longer than that.”

“Is it possible to assign someone else?”

“Nah.” She doesn’t elaborate. Cool. Rose did say she was in a bitchy mood, and she’s totally soppy with ichor. You don’t want to poke the bear any harder than you have already (honestly, what the fuck is wrong with you?). You take a deep, careful breath through your nose. You need to roll with the fucking punches here.

“What’s the assignment, Ma’am?”

She smiles at you with something that’s definitely a mouth, with sharp white teeth in a straight line beneath her lips. “Okay, so.” She straightens out, and her form solidifies into the human one she normally takes. “This kid’s run off to the Bajeis. Find him, bring him here alive for me. And…” She seems to lose her train of thought. “You get all that?”

“Find a kid in the Bajeis and bring him here?” you ask carefully. You’ve gotten some tricky assignments, but that’s _impossibly_ vague. But you can’t just tell her to her face that she forgot half of your assignment. “Anything else I should know?”

“Oh, shit, right. Oops. Okay. Kid’s got brownish skin, black hair, freckles, he’s like, mid-20s, short as fuck, uh, gonna have an Altean accent. Probably.” She pauses, and her human form muddies into a blobbier grey. It’s grotesque. “Just a probably on that one. Might be masking it.”

That you can work with. It’s still pretty vague, but you can work with it.

“Who commissioned this and why?”

She winks and lifts a finger to her lips. “Secret.” You don’t like that. “Oh, relax, Davey baby. I’m not askin’ you to _kill_ him. Just bring him here.” You don’t like any more, but work is work.

“Okay. Go to Bajeis, nab the guy, bring him here?”

“Oh, hmm. Well, no.”

“What?”

Rose massages her temples. “Mother. Maybe we could do the assignment work after we’ve received more details.”

Roxanne’s nose crinkles in anger. “Did I ask for your opinion on my timing?”

Rose swallows. Her face becomes a dead mask. “No. Sorry, Mother.”

Your chest feels tight. You don’t know how, but you’ll get her out of here. It takes most of your self-control to not back Rose up, and only because Rose has implored you at length to not get involved in these things. _Just pretend it never happened, actually, that’d be best. What are we even talking about? It seems like we’re talking about nothing, when we could be talking about some fascinating something instead. Hey, look over there, as they say, it’s something interesting._

“Anyways, Dave. You’ll probably be there at least a year. Oh, shit.” She completely slides out of her human form and into a writhing mass of grey. Her voice comes out a little burblier. She’s really uncomfortable to be around when the ichor is working through her system. You’re pretty sure you’d die if you tried to take even a fraction of what she downed on a weekly basis.  She can only tolerate as much as she can because she used magic to fuck with her own genes.

“I fucked that order up,” Roxanne says. Shocking. “Lemme restart. Watch him for interesting shit for a year, then bring him back after that. Don’t kill him!”

You stare at her. You couldn’t have heard that right. Your longest assignment to this point was a matter of months, and it was just a city away. “A year? Watch him for a year?”

“Yep!”

“…For what?”

“Interesting shit.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’ll see when it happens, won’t you? It’ll be interesting.” She waggles her eyebrows infuriatingly.

None of this makes sense. “Why not just bring him back right away?”

“You sure do have a lot of questions for your superior, don’t you, Dave?” She smiles.

That stops you in your tracks. You remember your place, clear your throat.

“A year in… Bajeis.”

The thing about Bajeis is that it’s an entire week away, bordering the country next to yours. It has a reputation for being significantly less hospitable to humanoid life than the region you’re from. Bajeis is filled with forests, mountains, snow, and large beasts that can and will kill you. Locals struggle over rocky plots of soil to wring out what little quick-growing vegetation they can during the warm season, and make up the rest of their foodstores with large game they hunt and a disgusting-sounding jelly made from one of the local evergreen tree’s needles. They trade their furs and crafts for food and a fuckton of beer, because besides hunting, there’s about jack diddly shit else to do in the winter. Bajeis fucking sucks, basically, and it’s in the middle of nowhere, and, unless you’re missing something that you’re probably not… “Solo?”

“Aw, don’t sound so sad about it. You’ll be fine!”

Oh, haha, okay. You swallow and try not to let it show how much you care. You definitely don’t let yourself look at Rose, but you see out of the corner of your eye how she turns Roxanne, then looks away.

“Can I ask why I’ll be there so long? Ma’am?” you ask.

“I mean, part of your mission is to collect intel on him. Our client has no idea what the fuck he’s doing there and they’re damn curious. There might be some situations where you’ll have to act. You can make that call on your own. You’ll know it when you see it, right?”

You take a slow breath and bite back _why did you not say this first._ Why the fuck is she laying the _yearlong_ part on you _now_? Is she that fucking slammed? Alternatively, this is a weird mind game to see if you’ll say anything. Oh, god, you’re leaving Rose completely alone with her, for a _year._ You feel actual pain in your chest - no, she’s been alone with her before, for most of her life, you need to chill. She’ll be fine.

Also, neither of you have any say unless you want to try to make it on your own.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“So yeah, that’s two weeks from now. Find the kid, watch what he does, figure his shit out, keep tabs on ‘im for a year, then bring ‘im here. Don’t worry, you’ll get the big bucks for it.”

“Understood.” A year. An entire _year._

“And don’t get caught. Year’s a long time. A lot can happen in a year.”

You nod numbly. It’s fine, and you know you’ll deal with this. You can roll with the punches. You’ve rolled with all kinds of shit. You’ve had worse shit, right? You just never had anyone you really cared about before. And you’ve never had to roll with the punches away from Rose. Like, impossibly far away, for an entire fucking year. This sucks.

“You’re gonna do great,” Roxanne says. “Make me proud, kiddo.”

“I will.”

When she smiles, you think it almost looks soft. “C’mere, you.”

You follow orders. You cross the path of damp stone from the audience platform to her throne and get on one knee. You kiss the back of her extended hand. She makes all her workers sign off like this, unless Rose is lying about that to make you feel better. She might be. You appreciate it.

You owe your life to Rose willingly. You owe your life to Roxanne less willingly, but you still owe it to her. You’d probably be dead if it weren’t for her. There aren’t a ton of fates worse than death for things like you, not when you’re so fucking hard to keep contained, but most people do tend to kill you on the spot when they realize what you are. Roxanne brought you in, got you away from that, helped you learn shit you ought to know. All that’s not free. You have to earn it. That’s been made explicitly clear by Roxanne. And it’s fine, you wouldn’t want to be a charity case.

It’d be nice if it didn’t involve you being on the other side of the fucking world from your best friend and probably-sister, though. But you don’t have a say in that.

You turn to leave.

“Permission to leave, Mother?”

“Go ahead, hun, I don’t own ya. Just be back before dark.”

“Hah,” Rose says flatly. You hear her footsteps coming to meet yours.

“Oh, Dave, hun, one more thing.” You both turn to face Roxanne. “I forgot to tell you about the… fuck. There’s… a brother, or cousin, he, uh.” Her entire form shudders. Rose wasn’t even being full sassy when she suggested Roxanne do this later. She’s really not in any fucking state. But neither of you say anything. You just wait it out. “Shit, he’s, like, important- mm.” A glob of her skin falls off of her leg and onto the damp tiles beneath her. Ugh. “Fuck. Fuck it. I’ll give you a writeup later, okay? One of yous. Remind me if I forgot.”

“Understood, ma’am.” You bow politely, turn around, and book it before she remembers something else.

That writeup had better be a fucking book. Your mission is outrageously vague. You don’t even have a _name_. You don’t know what he does, you don’t know why he’s of interest, you don’t know what they want from him. You don’t know who wants him or for what, which makes you really uncomfortable. You’d done some shit before, petty thievery and fucking with marriages that were already off the rails, but you’ve never straight-up kidnapped a guy. They could do anything to him, and it’d be because you brought him there. Hey, maybe he’s a dick! That wouldn’t help. You’d still be delivering a dude for potential torture or slavery.

Maybe that’s part of your test. It’s a loyalty test. That stops your mental train. _Are_ you loyal enough to do that for Roxanne? For Rose? You… don’t think you are. That’s not good for this kind of life, is it. You don’t want to think about that anymore. It probably won’t come to that, anyways. They probably just… want him for something else. Maybe he’s a dick. Fuck. You don’t know jack shit and you hate it. You don’t have anything but a vague description and weird instructions to watch a guy for weirdness. For a _year_.

Stewing about how stupid this is helps you not think about how much it sucks.

You and Rose don’t say anything on your way out. She doesn’t say anything until you’re most of the way back into the city. You can only see what’s around you through your dark vision. You head towards the barely-visible glowing yellow streetlamps. The silence is thick, broken up only by the sounds of breathing, crickets, and gravel beneath your shoes on the path. There’s not much to say that doesn’t suck.

When Rose finally speaks, her voice cracks. She clears her throat, looks away, and tries again.

“Ahem. You heard nothing.”

“Heard what?”

“Correct.” You can hear her half-grin in her words. “Anyways. We’ll keep in contact through writing. And other methods.”

“Other methods?”

“I haven’t had need to use it before, but-“ she taps your shoulder and motions for you to empty your pockets. She keeps walking and talking, normally, like nothing is going on. Weird. Roll with the punches, don’t comment. If she wanted you to comment, she wouldn’t be communicating only in gesture. You empty out your pockets. “-I can communicate with you while you’re asleep, if good fortune happens and you sleep while I cast the dreamtalking spell.” She points at your lucky coin and slides her finger across her throat, then taps her ear. “I’ll show you what you need to know about contacting me through a psychic link channel.” She’s unnervingly good at keeping her voice even while she does this.

You… you think she just showed you how Roxanne is listening to you. Holy shit? You momentously struggle to not say anything out loud about it. Holy shit, bitch put a spy hex on your lucky coin. That’s so rude. How did she even get it? She probably had Rose take it from you when you were still half-enemies. Maybe she snuck in your room at night and watched you sleep. She could have done anything, really.

Rose looks like she’s trying not to laugh. Your face is probably running a fucking gamut of emotions. Just to make sure, you shift your hand into a pink flame, then look at Rose. Raise your eyebrows. She nods.

Woah, okay. You put your coin back in your pocket and clear your throat. “Okay. Yeah. Cool. Teach me that, for sure. How long does that take?”

“Less than a week. A few days of practice at most. We at least have that much time to enjoy ourselves before you’re shipped off to the wintry troll forest.”

“Oh, God.”

“I kid,” Rose says unconvincingly. “It’s really not so bad. It’s more populous than the little drivel we were just stuck in.” She heads towards your favorite bar, and you follow her. “There is the matter of it being on the other side of the country.”

You swallow. “Yeah. There’s that… little detail.”

“You’re from nearby, aren’t you?” she asks quietly.

“Yeah,” you admit. It’s the most you’ve ever told her about your life before this. Fuck it, right? You’re about to be gone for who knows how long. “From Hesson.”

“Ah.” She holds the door to the bar open for you, and you walk in. You’re kind of nervous she’s going to ask more, but she doesn’t. Of course she doesn’t pry, it’s Rose. Shit, you really don’t want to leave. She looks so sad. She probably doesn’t want you to notice, so you pretend not to.

She orders you both some drinks and finds a secluded table.

“Did she snip your vacation, too?”

“Unfortunately. She says it’s time for me to start learning the _real ropes_.” She puts air quotes around it.

You let that sink in. That’s really big, actually, even if Rose underplays it. Roxanne is pushing her out of kiddie school and into straight up inheritance shit.

“Looks like you won her shitty contest,” you try to say jokingly, but it just comes out sad.

“Oh, joy,” she says flatly. She sips her drink and burps. “Really, it’s such an honor. How will I ever live up to the responsibility of inevitably being given a chapter in a shitty suburban neighborhood.”

Fuck. Every time she makes you laugh, you’re reminded that it’s a fucking _year_. You’ll be back. It’s fine. You’re being depressing.

“Shit, dude, you’d get like, two assignments a month.”

“I’ll be popping off the handle.”

Everything you say to each other is flat, weird, and a little off. Keeping the charade up is becoming too uncomfortable for you to stomach.

“This sucks.”

“Yes.”

Silence hangs between you as chatter and music and shouting roils in the air around you. You take a deep drink. She got you the kind you love, the one that tastes like chocolate and coffee. That makes you more emotionally gushy than it should. You glance over at her. She looks pensive.

“What’s on your mind, dude?”

“I’m not going to ask you to stay here. That would be childish and inappropriate.”

“It’d be fuckin’ great, is what it’d be.” Hah, as if. She’d never disobey Roxanne so directly. You don’t fault her for that. You get it. It’s just how things are.

“You would, wouldn’t you?” she asks quietly.

“Over the rocky hills of fucking Bajeis? Maybe.”

Rose snorts and takes another swig of her beer. “Come find me when you’re done,” she says evenly. ”If I’m not here to greet you.”

“Yeah, totally.”

“Cool. Now, let’s try to shake off the tenebreous mood and make the most of these two weeks.”

“Fuck yeah.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dave has disadvantage and crit fails on perception

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> note the mild dubcon tag! they boink towards the end of this, it's pretty vague, but it's mild dubcon because it's a lot of false pretenses all around

You’re bored to death, and you’re not even halfway through the journey.

You at least got more details about the job, eventually. Rose delivered you a coded letter that only the two of you could make sense of. You look out the window of your carriage and watch the trees too slowly drift by. You’re not far enough to feel any difference in temperature, but you know it’s coming. Bajeis is the city right on the border between Skaor and Yuzul, also known as shitfuck coldland, land of the eight-month winter. You hate the cold. You had a hard-enough time in the Rizel winter this past year. Hesson was close enough to the ocean that you were used to summer for nine months of the year, with a mild three-month chilly season that required you to wear a light jacket instead of short sleeves. Rose helped you buy/steal some warm clothes to get you through the winter. Your chest hurts a little when you think about her. She didn’t show you the land of cat people. She said you’d have to come back for it. It’ll be the first thing you do after this.

You’re two days into the traveling. At least the nausea off carriage rides has worn off. You look over the note that Rose sent you. It’s incredibly detailed. You have a feeling she pulled a few strings to get you some extra information, even if she wouldn’t admit it.

_Mid-20s. Light brown skin, 5’3-5’6, dark hair, dark eyes. Apparently has “distinguishing” freckles, whatever that means. Unfortunately little clarification from any source about this. Personality difficult to asses. He’s been reported to be spoiled, cantankerous, quiet and incredibly loud, depending on the source._

_Altes is currently undergoing a civil war. He’s likely linked to the rebelling faction. Motivations for living in Bajeis unknown. Also unknown to what degree he’ll have Altean affectations, but a short rundown of the country’s culture and history may prove useful. The current leader is a dictator named Meenah Peixes. She comes from a long line of Peixes, all of whom ruled the country with a flair for dramatic and excessive violence. Enforced an extremely strict caste system. Alteans tend to resort to violence quickly and tend towards violent metaphors and figures of speech._

_The rebel leader comes from the lowest caste. He has a knack for gathering an army. He had a reclusive nephew who stayed out of public attention, reported to have gone missing about a year ago. Unclear if he was killed, converted, or ran off of his own volition. A funny feeling tells me it’s the latter, and he’s your mark. Will tell you more as we discover it. I’ve placed feelers in all the relevant connections, and then some._

You’re glad she went through the massive effort of finding this shit and writing it down for you. But, you’re really, really not into the idea of kidnapping returning someone who tried to get away from that kind of violent, dangerous turmoil. Two options, your client could be the dictator or the uncle. One option sucked only marginally more than the other. Both of them delivered the guy right back to the violent conflict he traveled a little under a thousand miles to get away from.

You wonder if Rose knows how conflicted you are. You knew better than to tell her. Even without Roxanne listening, what was Rose supposed to do about it? It’d just make her feel shitty, if she didn’t tell you outright to stop complaining. Neither of you get to have luxury of morals. You put the letter away and start thinking about your personas instead.

For the traveling, and for the first few weeks in Bajeis, you’re a strapping young lad not too far off from your base human state. Jereme Young. He has your olive skin and light blonde hair, but his face is a bit more chiseled and wrinkled with years of hard work. You shifted yourself a nice set of worker’s hands, too, all scarred and calloused and shit. You’re a drifter looking for some farmhand work during the warm season, as much as you’re looking to explore the world like the jaunty young hipster you are. If the town has work, you’ll take it. If not, you’ll bum around for about a week getting all up in everyone’s business before taking a carriage to the next town. At that point, you’ll either shift into another more permanent worker type dude, stick around for a few months doing that, gathering intel; or, you’ll play the part of the stranded diplomat. Eventually, you’ll read the mood of the town and figure out if and how you can get into a more stable position. Hopefully, you’ll figure out who to impersonate to get close to your mark. Then you can watch him from within without him noticing. That’s if you can find him in the first place, with this vague shit you’ve been given as an assignment.

Usually, you’d lean on an armored rat as your backup plan. Usually, you’d be able to access Roxanne’s doppleganger healers if you accidentally stepped on a mousetrap. However. You don’t have access to that, so you’re not going to rely on animal forms except for emergencies. Animals don’t follow the same rules that humanoids do. It’s fucked up. You hate animal forms. It’s no tragedy you can’t use them here.

You look out the window of your carriage. The position of the sun tells you it’s not even noon yet, and you’ll be travelling until well past dark. You lean back against the cushioned seat and groan.

*

Somehow, you survive the journey without dying of boredom. You watch the trees change from leafy greens to needles and pines, and you feel the air get cool enough to prick your skin. And this is the warm season. You’re going to literally fucking freeze to death.

The carriage rider shouts back that you’re approaching town. You stretch out your stillness-sore bones and muscles and get up. Roxanne paid for his services before you left, but you still slip him a tip. You have more than enough money to survive this next year out, and you have your ways of getting more when and if you need it. You get out of the carriage with your bags on your back and look around you.

For all that you worked and lived in different cities, you realize you never left the warm Obre region in your life. Bajeis is a world away from Obre. You didn’t realize before that Rizel had an architectural style. Of course buildings were large complexes made of metal and/or clay. Apartment complexes housed hundreds, snugly tucked against government buildings and tattoo parlors. Cobbled alleys wound between all of their curved roads.

Bajeis, on the other hand, is starkly not that. Buildings litter the city sparsely, separated by far too much of jack shit. They’re squat and square and made of brick, and all of them have large chimneys. Instead of the soft green trees and grasses of your home, you’re greeted by a few hard-looking shrubs and tight little groups of flowers. The trees have been cut away from the main town area, but you can see where they start back up again, creating a thick, dark-looking forest of pines on all sides of the city. In the distance, there’s a pretty rad view of a green mountain range.

You’re kind of intimidated by how different it is. You take a deep breath. Thank shit you chose a traveler. It’s in character. You’re fine. You quickly adjust Jereme’s backstory in your head. This is his first venture into this land, and he’s from a little coastal town in the neighboring region. It’s fine. You’ll be fine. You take a deep breath and take your first few steps into your home for the next year.

You ask around and quickly discover, to your absolute fucking dismay, that there is one (1) bar and one inn, and they’re the same place. You also discover that Bajeis is kind of dead. You walk into a fur shop and all two of the people inside stop their conversation to stare at you before they give you clipped, uncertain answers.

You hate Bajeis. Stupid fucking brick houses and pointy trees. That bar had better be good. You take your bags and head in that direction.

The innbar, at least, is lively and welcoming. The bartender waves you over.

“Need a room?”

You’re so fucking drained. You don’t want to be on, you don’t want to be a character, you just want to go to sleep. But you’re on. You’re an excited wandering farmhand from a neighboring village. “Yeah, for a week.”

“A week, eh? Just passing through.”

“We’ll see about that.”

“Oh?”

“Lookin’ for work.”

The bartender smiles in that customer service way. “Well, we have more than enough of that, this time of year.”

Nice. “Glad to hear it.”

“Now, kid, you’re lookin’ a bit like a stiff breeze might blow you over. Let me ring you out that room.”

Thank _god_. You’re embarrassed it’s so obvious, but you’re too tired to care. He rings you out. The price is reasonable enough. You pay and head to your room.

You feel your form wibble as soon as you close the door behind you. “Cut that shit out,” you mumble. You center, reform, solidify. This happens when you’re really tired or stressed. It’s not as bad as it used to be, not by a long shot. Today, can forgive yourself for wibbling, with the week you’ve had. You start to unpack.

The room is nothing impressive. Wooden floors, wooden bed, a mattress made of wool with some nice linen sheets and a thick quilt on top of it. You are in the Bajeis. There is a quilt on the bed in June. You wonder if you’ll need it tonight.

You don’t have much to unpack, and you finish quickly. The tiredness of the entire journey hits you shortly before you put the last of your things away, hop in bed, and pay the nappy piper for a while. Hey, maybe Rose will pop by and dreamtalk with you. That’d be cool. You could tell her how weird shit looks around here, tell her how cold it is already, ask her how shit’s holding up at home. That’d be nice.

*

The sound of music wakes you up. You roll out of bed. It’s the time of night when the bar is in full swing, and it sounds like half the fucking city is down there. You resign yourself to the fact that you won’t get any sleep until they leave. Inn in the fucking bar, whose fucking idea. You get out the washing bowl and start filling something up so that you go down there without smelling like a zoo.

Rose didn’t contact you during your sleep. She probably didn’t know you were sleeping. Why would you be sleeping in the afternoon? Of course she didn’t contact you. Don’t be ridic. You wash up, change your reeking clothes, and head down.

There is, indeed, a fuckton of people here. This is actually the most poppin’ bars you’ve ever seen. Probably because it’s the literal only one in the city. Thick smokes of various types, legal and not, fill the air along with shouting, laughing, and lively music. You make your way over to the bar and order a beer. The bartender comes back with a mug filled with green-tinted something.

“A beer,” you clarify.

“Yeah. 2 silver.”

“Shit, okay.” You pay him, pick the mug up, and take a big gulp. You manage to not spit it right the fuck out, at least. You can’t stop your face from contorting. This shit is abhorrent. It tastes like poison. You shouldn’t be drinking this, it’s not edible. Next to you, a few guys laugh uproariously.

“New in town, eh?”

“Haven’t developed a taste for the ol’ firbeer?”

“Think he just needs to give it another glug! Go on, kid!”

You roll your eyes. You smell the liquid, considering if it’ll be as horrible now that you know what to expect. Hmm. Hmmmm.

“Too strong for you?” the bartender goads. Oh, good, he’s getting in on it, too.

“If it knocks my teeth out, can I sue you for the dental bills?”

Some of the guys, who apparently have nothing better to do that watch you, make some noise at that.

“Does he want a man’s drink, then?”

“What do they serve on your island, princey?”

You turn to look at them. Did you just pick a fight within five minutes of intermingling with the locals? Not the best start you’re off to, here. You should probably deescalate, bow to their superior manliness. You throw up in your throat a little.

“Oh, fuck off, you peabrained barbarians. You wouldn’t know a man’s drink if it smacked you in the fucking face.” Whoever that is sounds different from the rest of them. Oh- oh, he’s taking the seat next to you. He’s on the short side and built like a brick house, with light blonde hair and intense eyes. He wears a dark, long-sleeved cotton shirt that hugs him just right and dark, soft-looking pants.

Holy fuck, he’s hot. He looks like he could pick you up and do unspeakable things to you. And _wow_ , you’re excessively horny. A week and a half looking at trees and horses’ asses apparently got to you. Shit, that’s fine. It’s high time you indulged in the delights of having a fucking body again. You’ve been deprived long enough.

“Ignore those pricks,” the guy says. “You’re the first guy here with any fucking sense in months.” He pushes your beer away. “This shit is horrible and makes you actively fucking stupid. Yim!” The bartender walks over with a long-suffering look. Your new drinking buddy orders two of something in a language you don’t know. _Capra_ , or something.

His accent is deeply weird. It’s nothing you’ve _ever_ heard before, and you lived in the capital city of Skaor. All his consonants are a little harder than you’re used to, and he makes these weird heavy sounds in the back of his throat on some of them. It’s not Altean, at least. _Might be masking it_ , she said. But this dude is _also_ blonde, and has blue eyes. No freckles, either. The only shit he _does_ have in common with your mark is 1) pretty short and 2) light brown skin. That could describe half the guys in this bar. You’re not worried.

“What’d you get me?” you ask.

“Funny that you assume it’s for you.”

That throws you for a loop. There’s probably (definitely) something broken in you that you just find the friendliness whiplash hilarious. “Shit, sorry, is buying two drinks next to the person you’re talking to a custom here? You’d know. I’m new in town, see.”

“You want to know about the customs? I can tell you about the fucking customs. First custom: go fuck yourself.”

“Slow down, I left my journal at home. What was that? Go fuck yourself?”

He laughs a little. Nice. “It’s Capara. Rum and mintwater. It’s infinitely better than this needle diarrhea,” he says, raising his voice. “These fuckers know how to do mint.”

The bartender comes back before you think of a response to keep him talking. You’re tired, you’re off your game. You smell your drink carefully, but your buddy just slams his back. The bartender waits for him, grabs his empty cup, refills it. What the fuck. Who the fuck is this. You take a drink. He’s right, it’s infinitely better. Stronger mint than you’ve ever had, and it almost kills the rum under it. You’re glad you took a nap before coming down here, or you’d probably fall asleep after two of these.

“So, what are you doing in Bajeis, um…” you wait for him to introduce himself.

“Brent,” he says.

His name is not Brent. You’ve had practice with fake names. You can see how it takes him a fraction of a second to think about it. Odds of him preying on you in the bad way just skyrocketed. He’s so hot, what a fucking shame- oh, wedding ring. It’s probably just that. You could spend the night in your room, instead of his place, to be extra safe.

“I sell shit. What’s it to you? Want to buy something?”

You can’t tell if he’s flirting with you or finds you insufferable. It’s the most fun you’ve had with a human in a while. “Maybe, dude. What do you sell?”

“Calligraphy and marriage counseling.”

You have no idea if he’s fucking with you. “At the same time?”

“No. Why the fuck would it be at the same time? Unless I’m penning divorce cards to send around in celebration, in which case I’ve failed ruinously and should just quit.” He’s not kidding. This shouty dude with the fake name and the gratuitous swearing is a calligrapher and a marriage counselor.

“I dunno, dude, that sounds like a success to me.”

“Explain,” he demands.

“You got them so empowered they’re bragging like it’s a new baby. _Look, I’m dumping the dead weight, and I’m back on my groove_.”

“You wildly overestimate the _groove_ that these people had to begin with,” he says darkly.

You laugh. This is your favorite human. Oops, you should probably chill with the _human_ shit, even in your head. Who knows what might slip. You’re not with Rose anymore, you _can’t_ say shit like that out loud… to anyone. You miss Rose. Fuck, this drink is strong.

“I asked you a question. Are you that drunk already?”

“What?” You snap to attention. Yes, you are. “Fuck no. I’m all kinds of the best drinker there was back in my hometown.”

“Oh, is that right? And where’s that?”

Oh, fuck, where- “Kolm.”

Brent does not believe you. Well, you’re matched now for being fishy fuckers. “Why the fuck would you leave the beaches of Kolm for a barren shithole?”

“Have you never wanted to explore?”

“No,” he says flatly.

You laugh. Dude’s absurd. You see him crack a smile. He has a really cute smile, it changes his whole face. Shit, was that a joke he told? He totally got you. It’s kind of a shame you have to drop this persona after a month, tops. But that’s how it has to be. It’d be stupid to get serious a human, anyways. They’re fun to mess around with, maybe friends at a safe distance, nothing else.

“What’s your name?” Brent asks.

“Jereme.”

“How long are you here, Jereme?

“A few weeks, maybe a month, depending on work,” you say, and finish your drink.

“Nice. Do you wanna fuck?”

You’re so, so glad he waited for you to swallow your drink. You would have spewed that shit all over everyone.

“Shit, dude.”

He scowls. “What? I wanted to clarify before I started hitting on you. It’s important to make my intentions clear.”

What the fuck is happening? “Oh my god, where are you _from_? Is that a thing people do by you?”

“I’m from stop-wasting-my-time-city. Is that a yes? Or a no?”

“Shit, babe, with a steamy invitation like that, I’m halfway there.”

“Erotic.”

“Just keep talking, you’ll probably finish me off.”

He smirks a little, barely. “Yeah, you seem like you have a short fuse.”

“Just call me a pathetic jackass a few more times.” You’re considering steering this out of hilarious and into actual sex talk. Just considering it, though. The hilarious part is fucking great, and you could hang out here most of the night. A woman’s voice interrupts your thoughts before you can.

“Brent!” she says. “What are you doing here? You said you would meet me-“ she turns to look at you. “Oh, hello!” she says happily.

This is, possibly, probably, the cutest chick you’ve ever seen. Her smile is huge and open, and it lights up her face. She has thick, bouncy black hair and a face alight with dark freckles. She’s wearing a gorgeous green dress with gold accents, and it bunches adorably around her wrists and waist.

“Jade!” She extends her hand to you.

You shake it. You don’t understand why she’s introducing herself to you, but, nice. “Jereme.”

“Are you two hitting it off?” she asks jovially.

You stare at Jade, trying to figure out why the fuck she would ask that. Unless…

“Jereme, meet my wife,” Brent says, smirking.

Ah. Yes, of course. You’ve been here five fucking minutes and you’re already fucking up. It’s good that you _can_ do this over with another persona, because you’re probably going to have to.

“Good find, he’s cute. How long are you here?” Jade asks you.

And you’re confused again.

“Week to a month,” Brent says.

“Does he already have a hotel for the night?”

“Fuck if I know. Yim, over here!”

“Well, Jereme-y, we have a pretty big bed.”

You balk.

“Subtle,” Brent monotones.

“Dude, like you can talk,” you say, regaining your composure. Roll with the punches. The sexy punches. This is just a thing they do, together. Okay.

The bartender sets another drink down in front of you.

“Oh, what did he say?” she asks you.

“Quoth, _do you wanna fuck._ ”

Jade cackles.

Dude goes a cute shade of barely, barely-there pink in his cheeks. “I didn’t say it like _that!_ ”

“You absolutely did.”

“Well, it clearly fucking worked, because you’re still here.”

“Oh, is that what that means? Maybe I just wanna try fancy drinks on your tabs.”

“Do you? Do you just want my fine drinks?”

“Brent can show you a fine drink,” Jade says. She winks at you and waggles her eyebrows. “He can show you a tab, too.” She has a weird accent too, one you can’t place, but totally different from her husband.

“Four different kinds of tabs. Your mind will never be the same.”

“Bar tab, grocery tab-“

“Don’t just tell him!” He looks at you. “You have to work for the other two. Earn them. Or pay me.”

Who are these two? You adore both of them. You should see if you can’t work for them-

 _Down, boy_. Amend the thought. It’s nice that these two rad humans found each other. They clearly deserve each other’s company, they’re both delightful as fuck and the kind of weird that seeks out similar weird. They’re still humans. They’re also married to each other. You’re a fun game they play, and they’re a fun game you play. It’s games all the way down.

Jade sits down next to you and shouts the bartender over for another drink.

Jade tells you that she’s a mage, and also does all the hunting for her and Brent. The more she talks, the more you can make out her bouncy, lilting accent. Definitely Helman. It doesn’t explain what the fuck she’s doing here. Helma is an island about 200 miles off of the coast of the continent. From the stories you’ve heard, it’s a tropical paradise except that most of the flora and fauna are evolved to make human life as difficult as possible. Hah, like Brent was asking you, why the fuck would she leave that for this shithole? Except, with Jade, it’s demonstrably true and not a sack of weak lies.

A little wiggling part of your brain tells you that this is meaningful, with regard to Jade, with regard to Brent. You can’t figure it out. Chick’s from an island, dating a dude from… where is he from? You must not have asked. You should ask.

“I asked you a question!” Jade pokes you.

“Woah, what?”

She laughs. “Wow, you were really lost in that thought! What were you thinking about? How to fix the winter climate without deteriorating the quality of the crop cycles?” she jokes.

“Something like that, totally. I’m a bigshot scientist where I’m from, you know.”

“You’re so full of shit,” Brent says.

“No, it’s true. I’m a master caster.”

Jade’s eyes light up in an unironic way. “What’s the most complicated spell you know?”

You almost fucking tell her that you know cloudkill before remembering that you, Jereme, are a farmer. You grew up on a farm and spent most of your time working over crops. You do not know cloudkill unless you want to rework your entire backstory while you’re blasted. “Don’t get too excited about this, okay, but, color burst.”

She laughs. Most children know color burst. If you’re even vaguely interested in casting magic, you learn that right after mage hand. “I’m in the presence of a master! I’m not worthy!”

“You can be, if you tell me your most powerful spell.”

“Impossible, you’re too impressive.”

“I make exceptions for total babes.”

She gets a little flustered and smiles even wider. “Well, it’s not perfect yet, but I’m making some exciting progress on recall spells!”

“Oh, of course you are. Child’s play. Holy shit, though, seriously?” Honestly, of course she’s learning to fucking teleport. _And_ making progress on it. What the fuck. That’s mage grad school shit, and she’s a hunter living in bumblefuck mcsnowfall. If half the population of Bajeis is half as interesting as this couple, your year is going to pass in a fucking week.

“Maybe I’ll show you how it’s done, someday,” she says, and raises her eyebrows.

“You’ll have to, that’s kind of the coolest shit I’ve ever heard.”

“Flatterer!”

“Yeah, no, seriously. Shit, how did you guys meet?” It might be pushing too far, but you’re dying of curiosity.

You’re pretty drunk, and you can _still_ see the flash of hesitation in her eyes. Oh, so she’s an international woman of mystery, too. Or they’re both just really private. Or they’re secretly somehow your marks, against all odds. Or maybe they’re also dopplegangers on a secret mission, and the three of you are all bonding over outrageously fake bullshit. Probably that, yeah.

Brent steps in. “We went to school together in Rizeta,” he says flatly. Rizeta, the country between your home Skaor and Altes. That would explain his weird accent, you drunkenly think. Totally explains it. “She was really good at everything and I sucked at everything, so she tutored me.”

“You just needed a little nudge!”

“Needed something.”

“So, you guys do this kind of thing a lot?” you ask.

They turn to look at you, confused. “Come to the bar?” Jade asks.

“Pick up strangers,” you clarify.

“Oh! Sometimes, yeah.”

Brent scowls at you. “What, do you have a problem with that?”

You’re curious how the stick got lodged so incredibly far up his ass, but asking would just lodge it farther. “Absolute, complete and utter opposite of a problem.”

He relaxes. “Good. Another?” he asks, motioning to your empty cup.

“Fuck no, I’m done.” You’re not about to get so sloppy that your form starts to wiggle, or you slip and fatlip out some truth about Rizel or your pickpocketing skills. Or spill something worse and fail the mission outright.

The three of you talk more. You find yourself more and more charmed by them. You worry they’re casting a charm. But if you have the ability to think that, that means they’re not, right? You’re pretty sure that’s how that works. Anyways, you still have your head on you. They’re fun. You’re having fun talking to them, you’re practicing your new persona, and you’re unwinding from a long trip with a few fun strangers who you’re going to bang later. It’s nothing more than that. It’s fun. And it’s a whole lot of fun. So much that, eventually, you stop worrying about just how fun it is.

*

Eventually, Brent finishes his last drink.

“So, by the way, I can’t wait to take you home,” she says, conversationally. She barely even lowers her voice. “You’re really hot.”

Your jaw drops a little, but you pick it back up. “Wow. Uh, same.”

“If you’re ready and you’re still up for it,” Brent says.

“Dude, totally.”

“Thank fuck.” Brent, at least, speaks low enough that you can barely hear him. “I need to fucking hear what kind of sounds you make.”

You’re getting hard in the middle of a fucking crowded bar. It’s hot and it’s a problem. “Holy shit, so, about your place, which isn’t a public bar?”

Brent looks like he wants to pin you down right over the bar. “You’re ready?”

“Let’s go!” Jade says.

You follow them out. You’ve spent enough time with them to assume they’re not secretly evil. You think you have a pretty good gut for that kind of thing. They take you to their house -- a squat little thing not even a block out of town, with a lush gardened yard that you want to look at more later. Jade opens the door for you and Brent.

You start to take note of the intensely cluttered shelves filled with books and statues before you feel hands on your belt buckle.

“Come on, that’s not the bedroom,” Jade says quietly into your ear.

You’re about to tell them to lead the way when Brent comes out of left field. He leans forward, touches your cheek as Jade pulls your pants down. Wow, so, this is happening, this is _your_ life, fuck yes. Brent kisses you and Jade starts rubbing at your junk. Then Brent pulls back, grabs your wrist, and leads you to the bedroom. You follow him.

*

You came for fun, and you definitely have it. Turns out they’re both stupid levels of hot. They’re both really good kissers, Jade rides you like a cowboy, and Brent is one of the most attentive fucks you’ve ever had. _And_ they let you sleep in your bed afterwards. You _need_ to do this again, if they’ll have you.

The cautious part of your brain screams how dangerous this is. You don’t even _know_ them, you can’t sleep here. Fuck that. If they attack you, you can just wiggle your way loose, right? You’re a wiggly shapeshifter. And they won’t attack you. You’re fine. You let yourself sleep.

*

When you wake up, it takes a bit to remember where you are. Right, the sexy married couple. Fuck yeah. And you’d thought yesterday was going to suck. In fact, no, best possible fucking way to start this year off. Rose is gonna be so jealous. Are you the first to a three-way? She’s gonna be jealous. Oh, Rose, dream-talking. Either she didn’t try to contact you last night, or you don’t remember it. You don’t remember anything after closing your eyes.

You have a clear view of Brent from where you’re sleeping, and you can feel Jade breathing softly behind you. He’s so cute. Dark skin, freckles-

No, what? Did he have freckles last night? No. Definitely not. What the fuck, you would have noticed these. They’re really dark, and they splash all over his face. Unless he was covering them with makeup. It’s not unheard of…

That’s when you start to notice the little black roots growing in from his dyed hair. Oh, haaah.

This is bad. You were off your game last night, but you weren’t _that_ off your game. You only went through with _this_ because there was no way he was _the guy_. He was just a weird fucking calligrapher marriage counsellor with his mage/hunter wife- who could probably cast appearance modifications on him, oh. That’d explain the eyes, could explain the freckles. There’s still the accent, but. But they’re new in town, aren’t they. Not so new they haven’t started to settle down. Probably about a year.

With the accent you can’t place and the fake name, the fake get-together story. Oh. Oh ho ho.

This guy is probably your mark.

Hah.


	5. Chapter 5

****

“Morning, you.” You turn over. Jade’s smile is so warm it could probably heat her house through winter. “Do you want to come to breakfast?”

Brent - your mark - kisses your shoulder. You remember this position featuring in last night’s escapades. It feels different now, without the ache of arousal driving the moment. It’s soft, open, and way too fucking tender to be shared between strangers. Your chest aches. “You should say yes to that,” he says.

Should you? Should you, now? You keep your breathing even. You should, yeah. Leaving now would be weird. Maybe you could play it off like you’re allergic to emotional strings, but they’d be hurt. They wouldn’t want you back. Then you’d waste Jereme, and you’d waste the weeks you’ll have to spend as him.

Then again, what is waste? What are you actually going to do, here, with them? Is it a waste to not spend the next few weeks spying on them?

You don’t have time to think about this now, they’re waiting for an answer.

“I’d love to.”

*

They’re both fantastic cooks, and they work fantastically together. You deduce, without the fog of booze clouding your judgement (how did you not think of a simple appearance charm last night? or hair dye? how did it not cross your mind? fuck, that was sloppy) that they’ve know each other for years. They’ve probably been close for years. You wonder what that’s like. It seems like it’d be the fucking best. You have a platonic version of something approaching that with Rose, except then Roxanne split you up on different sides of the world, basically. Shit, Rose, hah. You’re going to have to talk with her again. She’ll sniff out that something’s wrong from a mile away. That’ll be fun.

Jade and Brent start cooking a simple meal of eggs and sausage. It smells amazing. You haven’t eaten much since… did you forget to eat last night? Well, that explains why three drinks laid you on your ass. Your stomach catches up to your mind and rumbles embarrassingly. Brent looks over his shoulder, then sits across from you.

“Tell me about yourself.”

Be chill, be cool. “That’s a little vague. You want to know where I grew up? My first pet? Where I learned to shoot bows?”

Brent smirks and quirks an eyebrows. “You shoot bows?”

“Hypothetically. Maybe.”

“Tell us about Kolm!” Jade says cheerily as she whips the eggs.

“Uh, what about it?”

“The food!”

Fuck. You prepared a backstory for Jereme, but why the fuck would you have thought about the food? (you should have thought about the food. you’re still learning. this mission is too hard for you, why did they send you out to do this?) You rack your brain for the most popular Kolman food. “The fish is fucking great, of course.”

“Oh! Of course! I’ve heard about it. What do you do with it?” she asks.

What _do_ you do with it. “More like what don’t we do with it, right? Salted, raw, whatever you want.” Uh. Fuck. “My mom knows how to really poach it, though.”

Brent pops a fucking knife out of his pocket and starts cleaning out the inside of his fingernails absent-mindedly. “I used to fish.”

“Did you?”

“Jade would come, sometimes.” He glances over at her. “One time we pulled one on the boat, so big we had to slash its head off so it wouldn’t pull us back under.”

Your eyes widen. He says that like it’s the most normal fishing story in the world. You’ve never heard of a fish bigger than a few feet across. “It was big enough to pull you under?”

You expect Jade to chime in with some _oh, you silly goose, exaggerating like that!_ “Oh, yeah!” she says. “Oarfish are serious business! We weren’t _trying_ for oarfish, but you always have to be ready for whatever you pull up.” She stirs the pan, then does some flashy trick that makes flame dance over the surface. “It’s a good thing Brent had us take all the machetes on the fishing boat!”

Holy _shit_. “And where was this?” It was Altea. There’s no way it wasn’t Altea, land of the hyper violence. But you want to hear what they say.

Brent tells you it was in the country neighboring Altea. Brent is lying. He always seems to squint his eyes a little and look to the right before he lays a hot wad of garbage in your lap.

“Have you been there?” Jade asks you.

“No.”

“Well, Rizeta has the craziest fish! And wildlife! And everything, really. Even crazier than Helma.”

“Oh, woah, all the wildlife is like that?”

Brent nods. “It’s a huge shithole. Completely hostile to sentient life. Even this wart on the earth is an improvement, most of the time.”

“Only most of the time?”

“Sure. Nothing is all bad. There’s shit there that was vastly superior to this stupid city.”

“Like what?” you ask, genuinely curious. You’re interested enough to genuinely shut off the spy part of your brain. You’re just a guy, asking another guy a question, about his hometown. Nothing nefarious.

“Well, for one, everyone here assumes you’re straight, especially if you’re married to a chick.” He glances at Jade again, then rolls his eyes. “It’s fucking inane. And that’s not to start with the fact that swearing is _impolite_ , and we’re expected to pretend that violence doesn’t happen. Which is _worse_ than fucking inane. It’s fucking obnoxious.” He seems to be winding himself up a little. His voice gets a little louder the more he talks, and his words speed up. Oops, you poked a sore spot. Maybe being the lowest-rung nephew of a civil war leader gives you a few extra sore spots.

Jade comes over and sets out plates. She does something weird with her hand and Brent’s head that instantly calms him down. You desperately want to know what the fuck you’re looking at - she’s almost petting him like a dog, but faster? differently? - but that’s definitely too personal. You’re going to pretend you’re looking at the most normal shit in the world.

“Help me plate the meal, hun.”

“Okay.” Brent gets up, squeezes her hand a little, and starts plating up.

Whichever of them chose this place to get away from hyperviolent murderland with the civil war did good. This is of the sleepiest cities in the continent. People are too busy trying to survive against the hostile nature to dig their nose too deep into anyone’s business. Underbelly types tend not to bother with it, given that no one has spare money or time to give them. It’s the perfect place to disappear, as long as you’re okay sacrificing comfort and wealth to do it.

And now, you’re here to take them back! Split up the happy couple’s peaceful, unobtrusive life, and bring them back to a war-riddled hell. Just for money and the ability to work another shitty job tomorrow.

Breathe, chill. You _really_ don’t have time to think this out right now.

“Do you want to work for us?” Brent asks you.

“Woah, what?”

“Shit, does that make it weird? Because we still want to have you around. At night,” he explains seriously. You almost chortle all over your delicious-smelling food. Your life isn’t real, this isn’t real, this is too fucking ridiculous.

“Brent!” Jade laughs. “You _have_ to work on your phrasing.”

“Sorry, I’m not allergic to getting to the point.”

“Babe.”

“Sorry, sorry.”

“Uh, work? For you? Doing what?”

“We need someone to help with the garden. Jade is sick of wasting her time there. And that seems to be the kind of shit you want to do.”

“That’s exactly the kind of shit I want to do.” It is. You have to take this. You were assigned to watch them, and you’ve just been given front-row seats for your first fucking persona. This is unreal. “Yeah, totally.”

“Yay!”

Brent smiles. “Good. You can start whenever you want. We’ll pay you, what, 2 silver an hour?”

That’s an entirely fair rate. “Sounds good, dude. Wow, thanks. Don’t even have to ask around.”

“What a perfect fucking coincidence that you’re hot.”

“God, guys, get a room,” Jade jeers lightheartedly. It’s… weird that she’s so cool with this. That both of them are so cool with this. You don’t have the emotional energy to ask them what the fuck is their deal. Later, though. You should know where you stand with that. You don’t want to push it too far and get booted out.

“What are you going to do instead of farming?” you ask Jade.

“Oh, I’ve been working on these really elaborate high-level spells.” You listen to her explain a few of them, and note that you never fucking want to ever get in a fight with her. Oh, you probably will, though. Hah.

“Jade knows a fucking absurd amount about magic.”

You look in Brent’s direction and realize that his eyes are dark fucking brown, not the icy blue you remember from last night. Of course they are! He’s your mark! You do some quick mental calculation and decide that would be weird to _not_ comment on.

“Were you wearing contacts last night?”

His face darkens. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but everyone here is as pale as a fucking ghost. Including the eyes.” That’s true. You were kind of weirded out by the sea of sicky-looking skin and death-blue eyes last night, but then you were… distracted. “Forgive me if I want to at least _kind_ of blend in.”

Yes, of course. Blending in by dying your hair, marrying a Helman woman as tall as a giraffe, wearing contacts and using enchantments or makeup to mute your freckles. You decide that would be weird to let slide, too.

“Your freckles, too?”

He has to think about that for a while. It must be pretty relevant to his past, then. Oh, there’s the little squint. Maybe they’re especially identifying. Maybe it’s a family trait that links him to the rebels. Everything he’s about to say will be a lie.

You hate this. You hate knowing when he’s lying, you hate learning things that will be used against him. If only he wasn’t 100% your mark, you could enjoy this like you did last night. Now every new insight pricks you with guilt and dread.

“Is it illegal to want to make yourself less of a fucking freak when you go out in public?”

The anger diversion, then. Good choice, easier than coming up with a convincing lie.  “Shit, no offense, dude. You’re just pretty different from before,” you say. “Not a bad thing. Not at all. You’re hot both ways.” What’s wrong with you? Stop. Brent grins, just barely, and looks away, mumbles a shy _yeah, whatever_. It’s cute. You hate your life. You _hate_ your life.

The meal is almost over, at least. Brent picks at the last of his eggs, Jade polishes off her roll in an impressively ungraceful, massive bite.

“I agree,” she says cheerily. “Jereme, do you want dessert? We have jelly and ice cream.”

You almost let out a manic laugh. You’re curious what the fuck jelly and ice cream is, but all the curiosity in the world couldn’t keep you here a minute longer than absolutely necessary. Talking with them for another hour, about their farm, their lives, where you come from, the magic Jade is going to hurl at you within the year when you come for her husband? Hard pass.

“I really ought to get going,” you say, scrambling for an excuse. Fuck, why? Why do you need to get going? You’re a careless drifter and these people are your bosses now. What could you possibly- “I need to write to my family before I forget.”

Brent nods. “Okay. Come back tomorrow. Or find us at the bar. Or don’t, if you don’t want to. We’re not going to hunt you down if you decide to fuck off.”

God, he’s such a fucking charmer.

“What he means to say is, no pressure! But we’d both like to see you again, if you want.”

They’re going to kill you.

“I’ll be sure to come back,” you say, smiling. You don’t know if it’s true.

*

You keep your thoughts blank until you lock the door to your hotel room. The second you hear the click, your form wobbles. You let it. The shades are drawn, you’re alone - you don’t know that, actually. Fuck. You tighten yourself out and double-check the room. Yeah, of course you’re alone. Okay. Fuck.

You sit down on the bed and feel the human skin harden and shift into your natural hard, thick grey skin. Your fake hair is absorbed back into your skull, your hands coagulate into blunt points. You feel your muscles shift from solid human form to the more liquid doppleganger ones. You shift one of your hands into a vague hook and use it to claw the blanket over you, then you lay down. You won’t be able to sleep like this for a year, will you? A pang of exhaustion wracks you.

It didn’t used to be hard to play human. Before you shifted for the first time, it was sustainable enough, probably. Being a person sucked, but you figured everyone felt like that. Everyone thought their skin and muscles were itchingly wrong deep in their bones. No one talked about it, but why would they? That’d be weird.

Well, in fact, it wasn’t normal. Rose explained the ins and outs of what shifting does to your body. Both of you are special dopplegangers, being half-human. It’s actually possible for you to maintain a pure human form for years on end. It would suck a little more each month, but it’s possible. You just happened to reach the end of your shifty rope… when you did. _It’s like a muscle,_ she said. _You have to train it, and you have to shift it around so it doesn’t cramp up. That means taking on different forms. You’ve been flexing it in the same position for… 20 years, good god._  

You take a deep breath. You’ll be fine being a human for a year. Being a full doppleganger for at least a few hours every day is best, but shifting into different humans isn’t bad at all. If full doppy is a turkey leg, a different human every few weeks or months is a chicken thigh. You’ll be fine. You won’t randomly lose your human form. Between Rose’s shifting practices and the personas you’ll be rotating through on this mission, you’ll have your doppleganger muscles working healthily. Whether or not you actually want to finish the mission is an entirely different matter.

You have to. If for no other reason, you have to do it for Rose. You could probably fuck off and make your own way if you wanted to. You had to scrounge for food when you lived with Bro, you’d be fine in a city. You have enough training to make a constantly-shifting, always-anonymous life for yourself. But you couldn’t take Rose with you. She wouldn’t come. She’s close to getting real power soon. Roxanne probably did all this shit on purpose. Send you off into the freezing boonies, dangle authority in Rose’s face, keep the two of you totally separated for a full fucking year. Does she think you’ll have forgotten about each other by then? Hah, as if. Not everyone is as shitty as you, Roxanne.

You can’t abandon the mission. You can’t tell them you don’t want to do it. But can you ruin a family’s life for Rose? You feel sick.

They also like you, and you like them. You try not to let that factor in any more than it does. It’s a completely inappropriate thing to factor in. They don’t actually like _you_ , anyways. You - you’re your thick grey skin and a hook hand, no mouth or ears or hair - are a creature they would see as a disgusting monster. Wipe it off the face of the earth, or at least get it out of my sight. They’re humans, that’s what humans do. Creatures like you shouldn’t exist.

But that doesn’t mean you have a right to just up and fucking ruin them, does it?

Enough. You’re not going to get anywhere playing mental ping-pong with yourself. You have a full year to decide what to do here. Maybe they’re secretly awful. Maybe the dude had to flee because he got caught running a human trafficking ring. Plenty could happen in a year.

You shift back into Jereme. You have a full day ahead of you. You have to plan your next course. You probably found your mark, but you haven’t scoped out literally everyone else. You should start there. Just make sure. Maybe it’s someone else, and this is a crazy coincidence. It’s possible.

If that is them, how will you proceed with them? Short-term work is definitely a good idea. You need to be their farmhand. They seem to like you enough to keep you around for months (fuck). Maybe you could change your plan. Stick around as Jereme for a while, simultaneously act as the postman or grocer or someone to see another side to them. If worst comes to worst, you can ask Rose to teach you how to make a listening device. You don’t want to do that. You don’t want to do any of it, but especially not that.

You can start with scoping out the town, though. That’s safe enough.

*

You hunt around for most of the day. Thankfully, you don’t run into Brent or Jade. You’re not thinking about that bundle of shit any more until tomorrow. You’re keeping an open mind. Your mark could be any one of these people you encounter.

Flaws in your hopeless, pathetic logic: most of the natives are, in fact, pasty white. Most of them have blonde hair. All of them speak with a thick Bajeian accent. Most of them are either well past their 20s or young children. You see very few people in your/his age range, and those who are are definitely not your mark. That’s fine. You’re keeping an open mind. This is just the shopping district. You still have to meet the locals. All 4,200 of them. That’s why you were given a whole year! Have to be thorough!

You decide to treat yourself and scope out the bakery. You have to check anyways, right? There’s no reason your mark wouldn’t be working there.

He’s not, of course. There’s just a smoking hot, incredibly charming chick around your age who happily informs you that she owns the place and makes all the desserts every morning. She looks a lot like Jade, with a hint of a Helman accent. You could definitely just ask her if they know each other, but you don’t. You decide that you don’t want any more fun surprises about Jade today. You order three of the puffed sweetbread rolls, filled with sweet mint whipped cream and topped with a spun sugar nest. It’s almost too pretty to eat. The girl laughs and tells you that’s the opposite of the point. She tucks an extra in your box for no cost.

That interaction and the 17,000 calories or whatever were in those puffs give you enough energy for the next few hours of dead ends. You’re getting a feel for the town, though. That’s definitely a net positive. You’re doing what you were sent here to do.

You head back when the sun starts to set. The bar is buzzing with a few people, but it’s mostly empty. You probably should go down and mingle with more locals, scope out more of the people, get a better feel for the city. You consider it, consider the wave of exhaustion radiating from your brain. You can start tomorrow. You still have to recover from a week of shitty travel. You’re allowed to just sleep in tonight. You head up to your room and close the door behind you. Hopefully the din won’t wake you up tonight.

Whatever, you’ve done enough for today. You close your eyes and try to sleep. It’s hard to not worry about the fact that tomorrow, you’re going to have to go back to Brent and Jade. That’s tomorrow. That’s next year. You’ll figure something out by then.

It feels like it takes hours, but eventually, you drift off.

*

“ _Finally_ ,” Rose says. Lavender flames flicker around her, coming from a ring around her feet and sparkling all the way up her body. It takes you a second to get your bearings. You’re in a dark and starkly plain room, just floor and walls and a single table in the center of the room. “Forgive the setting, I haven’t mastered the conjurations yet.”

“Yo, Rose.” You step forward and try to hug her, but your arms pass right through her form. “Woah, okay.”

Rose smiles warmly at you and laughs a little. You feel like less of a jackass for trying to hug her hologram. “It’s good to see you, Dave.”

“You too, dude. Last few weeks have sucked.”

“Tell me about your travels. Do you want to take a seat?” she asks, gesturing to the table. A softer-looking couch appears next to it. “Any kind of seat, really.”

“A chair with a taxidermied bear’s head?”

The couch shifts into that. “Sick.”

She walks her hologram self over to the table, and sits opposite from your bear chair. You catch her up on your journey, the weather, the town, everything except the fact that you found your mark and boned him _and_ his wife on your first night here.

Rose raises her eyebrow when your story just ends.

“And nothing else?”

Your heart might skip a beat. “Is that a trick question?”

“I tried to access your dreams last night. You were, to put it mildly, hammered as fuck.”

“Ah. Yes. Well. That too.” You want to say as little about this as possible.

“Just, tired? Drunk?”

“Yeah, totally,” you say flatly. Guilt pricks your chest. You’ve told white lies, but you’ve never lied about something so big before, not to Rose. You trust Rose. You and Rose care about each other, you tell each other things. But not this. This would be stupid to tell her.

“Mm.” She doesn’t seem convinced, but doesn’t press. “Any progress on finding your mark?”

Your heartbeat kicks up. Does she know? She can’t know. Even if Roxanne was listening - ew, god, ugh, she probably was, you _need_ to leave your pants in another room next time that happens - no one said anything incriminating. You hope she didn’t tell Rose that you banged a couple. Ugh, gross.

“No. Just got here, though, I’m sure I’ll find something soon. Gotta start scoping.”

“Yes. Well, eventually, at least. I do have some new intel that might help you find him.”

Lovely.

“Lay it on me.”

“It’s very likely he’s traveling with a Helman woman,” Rose says.

It’s hard to keep listening to her. You have a bad case of the uncontrollable nervous giggles.

“She’s a fascinating case, actually. Second in line to the Helman throne, allegedly grew bored of waiting around to do nothing. She volunteered to spend the last few years in Altea on a diplomacy mission. She and your mark were known to interact often, and disappeared on the same day.”

You try, and fail, to wipe the smirk off your face. You nod. “Yeah, that’ll probably help me find him.”

Rose blinks at you, baffled. “Is … is that funny? Can you explain?”

You’re acting like a fucking creep. “International man of mystery,” you flub, and let yourself laugh a little. Rose looks at you like you’ve grown a second head. Hey, you could do that! If you wanted to! You’re a doppleganger! You need to chill, holy shit.

“Dude, though, tell me about the last few weeks for you.”

Rose smiles sardonically. “Nothing half so interesting, unfortunately. Mother’s promotion is slow-going, of course.”

“Of course.”

“I can catch you up on some of the local gossip, though.”

“Please, dude. Please.”

She does. You listen as she tells you about your home, the few people you knew there. You eventually get her to share some new details about her own life. She gets you to talk about the bakery, and the weird architecture, and the awful weather. You don’t know how long you spend there, or what time does in a magically conjured room, but it feels like hours. Eventually, though, she wraps it up.

“I have to get going now,” she says.

“Do you _have_ to?”

“Yes,” she says flatly, but she smiles. “It was good to see you. We should aim to have these more regularly, so I know when to contact you. It was very difficult to reach you during your travels because of the randomness of your schedule.”

“Shit, yeah, makes sense.” The two of you hammer out times and days, thrice a week, to check in. Hopefully most of that will be personal hangout time, and less about this fucking garbage gig. “See you on Thursday.”

“See you then. Take care, Dave. Keep your eyes open.”

She waves, snaps her fingers, and vanishes. The room around you vanishes with her, and the next thing you know, you’re whisked into the nothingness of sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter will be a week late! im going to write up a chapter ahead so i have a backlog, so i can have more time to edit in between publishing  
> hope youre enjoying the story!


	6. Chapter 6

You wake up to the bar’s cook loudly announcing that breakfast’s being served for a silver apiece. You groan, roll over, sit up. You should get bread and cheese from the grocer later. A whole silver is a bit of a gouge for one meal. You _can_ make whatever money you want, but Rose and Co taught you that it’s typically better to not glut small-town economies with mountains of fake money when you don’t absolutely need to.

The inn serves bowls of thin, sweet porridge, along with a gross-looking bean-based protein slab that tastes as good as it looks. Mm, rubbery salt. The porridge itself isn’t half bad. Not as good as Jade’s food. You wonder if working for her means you get free meals. You could take reduced pay in exchange for meals. Except that then you have to eat with them. Maybe not, then.

You feel better today. You have an entire year to figure out what to do. It’s not like you have to up and kidnap by the end of this week. You _might_ have to ditch this persona lickity split, though. It’s probably going to be too weird, being _right_ up in their business like this. And, they seem to maybe want to bring you even more up in their business. Yeah, way too weird. You’re going to jeopardize the mission if you try to sustain it. You eat your sweet gruel between nibbles of your bean paste and mull it over.

Jereme could stay for just a week or two, then say you had an emergency back home. Leave them some deeply fake contact information they probably won’t ever use, because you’re just a fun toy they play with to spice up their kinky marriage. You’ll get a few weeks of intel. You can probably even get away with not dancing the horizontal tango again if you claim exhaustion every night.

You feel good. You have a plan. You always feel better when you have plan. You’ve got it under control.

Today’s plan: do that fucking farmwork, snoop around their house with the finesse of a ghost cat. Maybe you’ll even find some dirt that makes the possibility of doing your job less of an exercise in emotional torture.

Tonight’s plan: start working on Jereme’s replacement ASAP.

You’ve got this shit set.

*

As you walk into their yard, you really notice their garden for the first time. The other morning, you left in such a haze that it’s a wonder you didn’t trip on your way out the door. Now, clear-headed as a fucking panther in the forest, you can appreciate what a disaster it is. The front yard spans about an acre in length, and it’s _completely_ covered in growth. The neighboring houses have lawns with the regionally-typical tiny shrubs, sparse flowers, and scrawny-looking grasses. Not this one. This one is covered in possibly every single Bajeian plant that you know and then some. It looks like pumpkins, green beans, and carrots are making a valiant effort to grow against the weeds that threaten to overtake their ranks.

Your job makes more sense now. There’s enough here to warrant actual work, and for more than a few days. It’s worth doing, too. The garden could produce a significant amount of food if it wasn’t choking in weeds. There’s probably a hideous back yard to work on, too. You wonder if it was like this when they arrived. Maybe that’s how they afforded it. You’ll have to figure out a non-suspicious way to ask.

You knock on the door and steel yourself. You’re going to be charming and friendly, no more or less.

Brent opens the door and smiles his guarded little half-smile. He’s not wearing makeup to cover his freckles. You’re like a fucking kid with a crush, you need to get ahold of yourself.

“I thought you fucked off for good.” He opens the door more and steps outside.

“As if. You think I’d turn down the opportunity to not have to ask everyone for work for a week?”

“There’s that romantic beachside charm Jade keeps talking about,” he says flatly. “I’m flattered. Are you ready to work?”

Jade is talking about your charm, to her husband. You swallow down the feelings of fluttery flower butterflies of romance and sweetness and letters of confessions because you’re a fucking grown man on an espionage mission, for fuck’s sake.

“Sure.”

“Give me a minute.”

You try to peek inside, get your spy on, but he closes the door in your face. You lean against the house while you wait for him to come back out. When he does, he’s wearing different clothes. He’s swapped out his non-descript shirt and pants for tattered burlap pants and a rough cotton shirt. He looks at your clothes disdainfully.

“You said you were looking for farmwork? Or am I too fucked up to remember two days ago?”

“That’s right,” you say. “Grew up on a farm.”

“Oh, good, then I don’t have to explain half this shit to you.”

Oh, oops. “Yeah, definitely not,” you lie. Oh, not good. You’ve seen some plants, but you grew up in a gravel-ass city, and most of your assignments were in government circles. Why did you decide to be a farmer? What the fuck is wrong with you? You assumed it was harvesting season, not time to weed, and you never even thought to brush up on plants. Sloppy. You rapidly think you a plan of recovery. You’ll just stick to the obvious weeds and follow his lead, watch what he does and doesn’t throw out. You’ve got this.

He leans over and works a weed out of the ground, then tosses it onto the cobblestone path. Okay, so, the thin reedy grass is a weed. “Throw the weeds here and throw them out when you’re done.”

“Got it.”

You lean over and start to pick a tellflower. You might not know half the weeds here, but you know this. You look over your shoulder to see Brent staring at you. Fuck. Okay, more tellflowers for now.

You try peeking at him a little later. It’s like he’s a fucking cat. Every time you look in his direction, his head snaps up to meet your eyes.

Okay, changing courses. You lean over to pick another tellflower and look over at the plants he’s thrown out. So, that ivy-like one is a weed. Good, you were running out of tellflowers close to you. You lean over to pick it.

“That’s a potato.”

You get a sinking feeling in your gut. Oh, you’re nailing this. Among other things, you assumed you wouldn’t be interacting with them personally at this point. You assumed a lot of things, and you assumed wrong. You look up to see him staring at you intently, his arms at his hips. His huge eyebrows are furrowed.

“Oh, shit,” you say, looking at it. “I didn’t get enough sleep last night-”

“I lied. It’s a weed.”

You drop your hands and look at him helplessly. You try to keep your cool. Does he suspect you? How? Why would he? Just from that? Is this that fishy? It might be. Fuck.  You need to figure a way out of this. Don’t put them on alert on day fucking three, Dave. Maybe he suspects new person he interacts with? No, too weird to invite them over for one-night stands, if that was the case. No, this is just you, being a suspicious dickhead.

Your heartbeat thrums in your throat. You’re fucking this up pretty badly. If you fail this, can you even go back? Will Roxanne take you back? Would Rose still talk to you? Could you still talk to her?

“I’ve known farmers. Literally nothing about you says farmer.”

“I’m not a farmer,” you say. Lying about _that_ will probably get you in more trouble at this point, it’s too far gone to recover.

“Okay,” he says sharply. “Why the fuck did you lie about that, and what the fuck are you?”

Jereme has to make a smooth exit, like, this week. Tomorrow would be too suspicious- fuck, you don’t have time to consider this right now.

You barely have time to think it out, but you hatch a plan. New plan. New persona. Jereme is actually a prostitute who wanted a different life. Pathos. Deep history. Complicated backstory. Needlessly angsty, but probably works for why the fuck you would lie about being a farmer. You lean into it.

“Listen, I’d rather not talk about it,” you say just as sharply. “Is it going to be a problem if I don’t tell you my whole tragic backstory?”

He seems to consider that for a while. Then he uncrosses his arms. He takes a few steps towards you. You watch his every move, trying to figure out what he’s going for. Will he kick you? Will he fire you? Will he stab you? Probably not the last thing, at least. Not yet.

He leans over and points at a blue flowering stalk. “This is a radish. Don’t pick it.” He points to a green tree-looking thing next to it. “That’s an evergreen sapling. Annihilate it without mercy.” He takes a few steps closer to you, pointing at another plant. “Weed.” He points at another. “Carrots.”

He’s… just going to let that go, then. He’s going to let it go, and still have you here, and teach you the shit you don’t know. You don’t know what to make of that. Is he that trusting? That’s moronic levels of trusting. Maybe it’s a gambit to keep you around and get a better grasp on you. It’s probably that. Dude had to be all kinds of vigilant with what he’s been through.

“Thanks,” you say quietly, in between plants.

He stops and glares at you. “I mean, don’t keep lying about innocuous shit. It’s fucking creepy. But no, you don’t have to tell me every single thing about your life to tend to my fucking garden.”

Your chest hurts again. Every time they’re nice to you, you want to vomit.

“And wear shittier clothes next time. They’re going to get filthy.”

“Got it.” You start picking the things that are actually weeds. “Where’s Jade?”

“Getting enchanting materials in the forest. She’ll be back later tonight. Do you want to stay for dinner?”

Why the fuck does he have to keep offering. It’s as tempting as it is incredibly not tempting. But you need to get inside their house more. You need to snoop. You decide to take him up on it.

“Yeah, that’d be wonderf-“ You make the mistake of looking up at him as he picks a thick root out of the ground. He has to tug at it, making the muscles in his arms flex to gorgeous definition. God, he’s that secret kind of ripped. It’s usually hiding under a thin layer of chub, but he’s buffed to hell.

Your higher, rational, sane mind knows for a fact that you cannot keep your shit together if you bone them again. Your baser self asks you what the big deal is, come on. Just once? Just one more time. Think of what he could do with those fucking arms.

He catches you staring.

“What?” he asks warily.

“Uh. Nothing.” You lean over and get back to work. “Are you going to be out here the whole time?”

“Just today, unfarmer tending my fucking garden. I have to make sure you don’t uproot everything. Can’t tell the difference between a fucking weed and a potato.”

“Excuse me, dude, not all of us grew up foraging in the wild and hunting fish with machetes.”

The natural next question is, _well, where did you grow up? What did you do?_ But you made that a sore spot with your persona, and Brent is respecting that for some reason. Luckily, the silence only hangs between you for a few moments before you hear Jade at the front of the yard.

“Oh! Hello! You’re here!”

You stand up straight and wave at Jade. In one hand, she has a bag full of what looks like random plant clippings. Enchanting materials. Her hair is an adorable mess, tied up in a ponytail and still ratty and with a few twigs and leaves. She’s almost as covered in mud as you are, but doesn’t seem at all self-conscious about it, and this makes your chest hurt. You decide that you hate both of them. Giving you feelings and shit. Unreasonable assholes.

She waves back, beaming. Then she crosses the yard to hug her husband. You’re never going to get over the near-foot height difference between them.

“Are you two almost done? Brent, you’re making dinner today.”

“Fine.”

“You’re invited!” she says to you. “Whenever you work here, you can eat with us.”

You didn’t even have to ask them, let alone bargain your pay. Agh. You smile and tell her you’ll be happy to join. Brent and her go inside, and you follow them in. They point you in the direction of the bathroom while Jade happily starts to show off her haul to her husband.

You finally get a really good look at the place. Not a lot of clutter, actually. Remarkably few possessions. Almost like… they were refugees that came here recently. Amazing. You idiot. You buffoon. You don’t linger suspiciously long, but you do take your time heading to the bathroom, soaking in the stark simpleness of the house. The few decorations on the wall were obviously purchased here - you see a preserved wreath, a painting of the mountains and the woods, a framed pinecone that might be a Jade original.

The only thing of note on the way to the bathroom is a book in Altean script. It’s on the table just outside the door. There’s a bookmark stuck halfway between the pages, which seem well-worn. You decide that paging through it would be too weird to explain away as curiosity, but you spend a few short moments decoding the title. Holy fuck, though, this title. You get as far as _In Which A Rebellious Young Hemomutant Finds Herself In The Heart Of The Enemy’s Camp, Meanwhile A Plucky_ before giving up. At least, you think it said Hemomutant. You have no fucking idea if that’s a thing, and your Altean sucks. You barely knew it before, and only had a few weeks to brush up on it, and that was in between your last days with Rose for a year.

You close the door to the bathroom and lock it. Your form shakes. Oh, that’s a new, alarming thing. A deep breath gets it under control. Just a one-off. You’ll be concerned if it keeps happening. Nothing to worry about yet.

You look at the bathroom around you. There’s a spout, a bucket, a washcloth. There’s a drain for the dirty water. Neat. They have flushing toilets, too, thank god. You start to undress, opening a few of the drawers to see what’s inside. Unsurprisingly, you find soap, razors, towels. No shit, you’re not going to find anything interesting - they wouldn’t let you back here if there was anything interesting, you realize. You feel sick. You just keep realizing things, don’t you? Always a little too late. They probably don’t know they’re playing chess against you, and they’re still two steps ahead. You _have_ to get your head on straight if you want to have any chance of completing this mission.

Well, problem identified. You can start working on proactive next steps next time you’re alone. Not here. You can’t think straight around them. Maybe next steps could be cutting back how much you see them. Stop inviting yourself to dinner. Stop playing pretend, like you belong here. It’s grotesque.

You mull it all over while you wash the day’s stank off. Your muscles are starting to ache. You’re glad you don’t have to explain why a farmer is so sore from a few hours of yardwork, at least. Your shitty lying ability came in clutch there. You really should have thought of _that_ before, too.

You thought you were good at this shit. But once you lose your safety net of Rose and the other dopplegangers? You’re crumbling. You have to pull yourself together. You’ve been through worse than this.

*

Jade is just as bright, friendly, and charming as she always is. She rambles at you (you encourage her, and hate yourself for enjoying what she says) about the spells she’s working on. You’re glad that most of them aren’t offensive. It leaves you some room for happy thoughts.

“Do you not know magic?” she asks you eventually. Apparently, you’re not asking a whole lot of magic-knower questions.

“Not a ton,” you admit.

“I could teach you! Oh, that’d be really fun. I’ve never had a pupil before.”

You laugh nervously and tell her that’d be wonderful. You hope you’re not around long enough to have to take her up on that. You have an image of using one of her spells against her as you cart away her husband to be tortured - and you shift your thoughts elsewhere.

The food is great, again. Brent makes stir-fried chunks of meat and serves them on a bed of fluffy garlicy noodles. It’s delicious. How are you going to go back to the hotel’s gruel after this? You’ll die.

Brent is quiet throughout most of the meal. It’s mostly just you and Jade, talking about magic and plants and enchantments. Brent says he’s tired, not used to working so much. You don’t know if you buy that, but pressing would be weird.

When the meal is finished, Jade lowers her voice and asks you if you have any plans for tonight. Your beast brain insists you don’t, because the way she bites her lower lip a little with her cute big teeth is… nice. But your beast brain is _not_ driving this ship. You tell them you’re too sore from all the work. They seem disappointed but don’t give you shit for it.

Your form wants to wibble the second you step outside of their house, but you manage to stay firm. Well. That’s getting alarming, isn’t it? That’s getting rapidly worse. You should ask Rose about it tonight - oh, except you can’t. No Rose until tomorrow. Great. Okay. And you’ll have to coat whatever you tell her in bullshit, too.

You make it back to your room without losing form. You make a mental note to get a bell for the door so that anyone coming in will wake you up. You have to be able to sleep in your base form. Then you start thinking about how to be proactive. If this is chess, you need to get ahead. Or at least not so far behind.

*

Jade meets you outside the next day.

“Brent told me you don’t know the plants,” she says. “I’ll teach you!”

“Oh, sweet.” You actually wore appropriate clothing today. Jade tosses you a pair of gloves, and you pull them on and get right to work. “Where is he?”

“Seeing a couple in his office.” She scoots up close to you and watches what you pick. She smells good, and you’re a huge creep.

“Oh, cool.” You lean over and pick something that’s definitely a weed. “I don’t remember if y’all told me where you were from?” You do, they didn’t.

“Well,” she says, “I’m from Helma. Brent is from Rizeta. We met in school.”

“Oh, right, okay.”

“And where are you from, really?”

Your heart skips a beat. “What?” you ask as jovially as you can manage.

“Calm down, I’m just kidding!” Some fucking joke. She starts to speak, but stutters on a sound. That’s weird, she doesn’t stutter. Either a K, J, G, or C. You tuck it away as possibly relevant. “Brent told me about the farmer thing last night, and- agh, I’m sorry. That was a terrible joke!”

“Nah, better to get all that out in the open, right?”

She beams. “Exactly! It’s stupid to pretend it didn’t happen!”

Oh, lovely. Usually, you’d agree with her. Right now, you really wish she was in camp _pretend it didn’t happen._

“Oh, that’s a blue heron flower. They’re weeds, but you can save them for tea.”

“Good tea?”

“It’s _great_. Aprodiasiac, if you believe in that kind of thing.”

Oh, good, an out. You steer the conversation as far the fuck in that direction as you can. “You don’t?”

“No,” she says matter-of-factly. “It’s pseudoscience the vast majority of the time. Or at least, solely mental associations. There’s nothing inherently sexy about an oyster. It’s just sea slime. This is purple burdock!” You look at the plant in her hand. “You can stew it up like turnips or use it for spells.”

“Oh, neat. Did you learn all your spellcasting in university?”

She’s as excited to talk about herself as Brent isn’t. “Oh, no! I learned most of it at home, actually. From books. And then I already knew most of the things in the classes. It was very disappointing. It’s okay, I got to look at some top-level grimoires.”

“What kind of spells do you work on?”

“Well- oh, that’s dandysage, don’t let it touch your skin! It gives you a nasty rash.” You carefully pluck the root with your gloves and toss it into the center pathway. “I love working on the weird stuff now. I know most of the powerful offensive and defensive spells already. So, stuff like water breathing, summoning elementals, how to cast without speaking.”

Would it be Jade or Brent who would kill you if they figured out why you were here? Ha ha. Jade is really fucking smart, god. She knows every single plant growing in her yard, and knows the uses or lack of uses for all of them. You hope you don’t have to get on her bad side. Brent’s lucky as shit.

You spend the next few hours with her, shooting the shit while you work outside. You smell something fantastic cooking inside, like fresh bread and rich meat. Eventually, Brent comes outside to join you. He smiles just a little when he meets your eyes.

“Come inside and eat.”

“Oh, already?” Jade asks.

“Yeah. Hurry up, I’m hungry.”

“Okay!”

You go inside. “You remember the way to the bathroom, right?” Jade asks you. You give her a thumbs up.

Today, there’s an unopened letter sitting on top of the book in the hallway. It’s covered in Altean. You carefully glance over your shoulder and don’t see them in the hallway watching you, so you take a closer look. It takes you longer than it should to make out who it’s addressed to. So, Brent is probably actually named Karkat, then. It’s from someone named Maryam. Great. Useless. Risky and useless. Some fucking move you played there. Chessmaster Dave is open for business. You leave it and wash off in the bathroom.

When you finish bathing, you think you hear the two of them murmuring quietly from the kitchen. You try to listen, but you can’t make out anything they’re saying. They stop talking when you open the door. You hear every single footstep you make in the hall on your way up. The silence is eventually broken up by sounds of plates and silverware being pulled out.

Brent/Karkat glowers at you. It’s markedly grumpier than his usual resting bitch face.

“Something wrong?” you try.

“Yes. Hurry up and eat. I have another meeting after this.”

You raise your eyebrows at him. “Everything okay?”

Brent closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. When he looks at you again, he still seems pissed, but a little less than before. “Yes. Sorry for being rude. It’s a really important meeting.”

This is weird. Did he see you reading their mail? But you double checked, and they weren’t in sight. Whatever they were talking about, they want to continue talking about, and they can’t do it if you’re here. That could be anything. “Oh, okay.”

“We can pack up your meal for you, okay?” Jade says. She starts tucking your food into sealable containers. “Bring these back tomorrow when you stop by? We’re _so_ sorry to just boot you out like this, but we totally forgot about this until just a few minutes ago!”

“Yes. Sorry,” Brent bites out. “See you tomorrow.”

“Have a good night!”

They practically scoot you out, like you’re a stubborn pile of dirt and they’re the world’s most efficient brooms. The door locks behind you. You walk home, with the hot bowl in your hands, nauseous.

You wonder if this might be a good time for Jereme to die. Wow, did he wander into the woods, never to be seen again? Did he leave a letter saying that he’s heartbroken from their rudeness and going home? You’re probably overreacting. You’re not going to kill Jereme, it’d raise too many eyebrows. They’re probably not suspicious of you, seeing as how you’ve done next to fucking nothing suspicious, _and_ they’re having you back. You looked at a letter for a few seconds, and you have a tragic backstory they haven’t unlocked. You aren’t even juggling multiple personas. You’ve successfully handled three at once before. You had some close calls, but never got caught. They probably just legitimately forgot a meeting.

All the same, you need to account for shit. Maybe they got word that someone was spying. Maybe that letter from Maryam tipped them off that someone found them. And then they had to just spend all night chatting up the mysterious stranger? Without even being able to plan a course of action?

You probably shouldn’t let the food they sent you go to waste. You open it, then stop yourself. It could be poisoned. If they suspect you, why not poison you? Well. Because the odds are pretty good that’d be murdering a random stranger, and they’d probably face at least some repercussions if they got caught. And why wouldn’t they get caught, when your dead body is found with their bowl, after you spent the day at their house, after hanging out with them for days on end?

You end up using a makeshift poison detection kit on the food anyways. It comes up negative. Of course it does. You eat it before it goes completely cold. It should be delicious, and abstractly you realize that the fresh bread and chunks of fowl from the forest are prepared skillfully, but you can’t focus on the taste.

So, what’s your course of action? Lay off the fucking spying, for one. You need to show yourself to be as trustworthy as possible. Maybe develop your story, make it extra convincing, and start doling it out. You feel sick again. You’re not doing that. There are other ways to regain their trust. Like… like what. Fuck.

You wish you could ask Rose for advice. You’re going to see her tonight, unless she’s too busy to dream stop in on you. You can’t wait to lie to her for a few hours.

You have a year. All you’re going to do is go there, do your job, be friendly. You’re going to save the spying for someone else. You already know everything you need to know about them. All you need to do now is make sure they don’t leave in the middle of the night. Fix their yard, then say you’re moving onto the next leg of your journey, then come back as someone else and piss away a few months far, far away from them. Next persona, you won’t put yourself on their direct fucking radar the second you step into town. You’ll just walk by every once in a while, check they’re still there. Kill time. That’s all you need to do.

You close your eyes and try to sleep.

*

You’re falling. You feel like you’re not as scared as you should be. Darkness surrounds you, but you can tell you’re falling. You feel it in your stomach. You wonder if it’ll hurt when you land. You see a soft lavender light under you, and it approaches slowly enough that you realize it won’t hurt. Slowly, steadily, you drift down into the room that Rose set up for your meeting.

It’s a bit more lavish this time around. She has a plush couch and multiple chairs. She has a few sconces of lavender light around her. It’s very spooky, very appropriate for her. She looks up from a book she’s reading and smiles.

“Nice new digs.”

“Thank you,” she says. “I have important information for you.”

“Oh, sweet.” It’s not sweet.

“First of all, any luck locating them? Mother tells me you’ve picked up a job on a farmstead.”

You swallow dryly. “Yeah, so, maybe this is them, right? Or not. I’ll find out.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Okay. You have time. Dave, please be careful.”

You don’t like how she says that. “You know I’m the king of careful.”

“Listen, please. I have an acutely ominous feeling about your mission. It’s infuriatingly obtuse in shape, as far as visions go. I can’t offer you more advice than that.”

Is it more careful to not go to work tomorrow? Or to go and just be super low-key? Probably the second thing. “Ah. Cool.”

She taps her finger nervously against her thigh. “Dave, what’s going on over there? Do you need to get out of there?”

You want to tell her, but you feel the weight of the coin in your pocket. You feel the potential for any item in this room to be bugged. You see her, even, and feel the weight of not knowing who she would choose. Probably you, maybe. You refuse to make her choose.

“Naw, I’m totally fine. This is seriously the most boring mission I’ve ever had,” you say. Her face looks pained for an awful second before it hardens up. “I mean, this town is boring as shit. You have no idea how little there is to do here.”

“Is that right,” she says sharply.

“Yeah, totally-“

“Well, then we have nothing to talk about here, do we?”

You swallow. “Dude, what?”

“I’ll talk to you later this week,” she says. The room disappears, and you fall again.

*

You wake up and feel sick. You fucked that up. You can make it up to her. You’ll try and find her some cool shit here to send back. You’ll find a way to tell her what’s going on.

You eat your disgusting hotel gruel and tell yourself that you’re _going_ to fucking get some bread today. After you get done with this farm shit, because it’s not open yet.

They’re not home. No one greets you in the yard. There’s a piece of paper stuck to the door, though. It’s in thick, loud Altean cursive. A different author than Maryam, with much different handwriting. It practically screams at you to read it.

You try knocking on the door. No one answers. You read the paper while you wait, and your head starts to spin.

_MEET ME IN THE BACKYARD SHED IF YOU WANT TO SEE YOUR WIFE AGAIN_

You feel like you’re probably responsible for this. This probably wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t come here. Where the fuck is Brent? Did they kill him? Did they already kidnap him? You can’t think. You take a deep breath. You have the pocket knife you always carry, but no time to get another weapon. You can shift your hand into a knife if you need to. Or find something on the ground to use. There’s a lot of shit you can do, but you have to help as fast as possible. You hurry to the back yard.

You get past the fence, into the back yard, when your body stops moving.

You try not to panic. You try to move again, fail. Okay. So. Maybe the piece of paper was laced with a paralytic, and you totally touched it. You possibly could have seen that coming. Oh, fuck, your heartbeat is racing. You can deal with this- fuck- no, you can, you just have to, you were looking at it by accident, and they can-

“Why do you know Altean?” Jade says dejectedly behind you. You’d shit your pants and flinch if you could fucking move. She sounds so disappointed. “Why are you really here?” She mumbles something under her breath, and you feel your vocal cords tingle.

No kidnappers, then. Oh, Karkat is a calligrapher, isn’t he. That was a trap. You walked right into it. Behold: here it is, snapping your fucking leg off.

You find that you can talk. “Looking for work?” you say pathetically. This is bad. You can’t think.

“Really?” You rack your brain for a convincing answer, but she speaks again before you can respond. “Why do you know Altean, Jereme?”

You have the physical ability to talk. That doesn’t mean you know what to say here. You swallow. The back door opens, and Brent stares at you, openly disgusted. “Bring him inside.”

You feel Jade’s hand on your shoulder, and she brings you inside.


	7. Chapter 7

You figured you’d fuck up at some point. You figured you’d get caught. You’d worked out a disaster escape plan for every mission that you had. If shit went down, you’d shift into something small and fast, flee, gather your things, and get the fuck out. You didn’t account for not being able to shapeshift. Shapeshifting was always integral to the plan. Why wouldn’t it be? You had no fucking reason to think you wouldn’t be able to shapeshift.

You can’t shapeshift.

Jade walked you into their pantry. Karkat glowered at you, swearing up a storm. They spoke to each other in hushed tones, then Jade left the room. Karkat was watching you like a hawk, but you still scoped out the room for an escape path. You found a crack in the wall, several feet away from him. Too risky. You looked behind you and saw enough space in the wall for you to slime through. It’d be a clusterfuck, but you could do it.

You tried to shift into a mouse, so that you could scurry over to the door. Nothing happened. You tried to stay calm as you tried shifting instead into a gooball. Nothing. You couldn’t move. You couldn’t shapeshift. You could barely breathe. She took shapeshifting away from you.

Probably temporarily. It’s inherent to your genetic makeup, it’d be like taking the dogginess out of a dog. You tell yourself it’s temporary. It doesn’t change the fact that now you have absolutely no fucking plan anymore.

You don’t know how they’re keeping you from shifting. You don’t even know if they’re doing it on purpose -- or doing it at all, for that matter. It could be that her holding spell is holding more than just your muscles in place. Maybe she’s strong enough to hold you down to your cells and the blood. They also might have tapped into your magic somehow, silenced it. Maybe the ground they sat you on is runed in such a way that prevents you from accessing it. Maybe you’re freaking out too bad to make it work. Maybe you lost it altogether. There are so many delightful options. All you know is that you’re pretty fucked.

Jade walks back into the room with some ropes. She efficiently binds your hands and feet. You wonder if you’re going to survive this.

“First thing’s first,” Karkat says, “go fuck yourself.”

Jade rolls her eyes. “That’s not helping!”

“Oh, shut it. I _told_ you we should have gone to-“ he stops and glares at you.

You should parse something from that, probably. Rose probably could, even under the circumstances. She’s really good at keeping cool under pressure. You, less so. It’s a wonder you’re not shitting on their floor. Well, maybe that’s Jade’s work. The gooey tendrils of her magic might be literally up your ass right now, keeping your fear-shit inside.

“Who sent you?” he asks you.

You don’t have a lot of time to think about it, but you decide to go with the “there’s been a mistake” route. Making countermoves without knowing what your enemy knows sucks, but your options are slim.

“Brent, this is crazy-“

“Put a truth spell on him.”

Your blood runs cold. Truth spells are so vanishingly rare and hard to perform that no one bothered to teach you a ward. But, behold, Jade. Of course Jade can cast it. You should have told Rose that your mark was married to a powerful mage. You should have told Rose a hell of a lot more than you did. She could have helped. You wouldn’t be here.

“Good idea! Give me a few minutes to get the mats.”

“There’s no need for that,” you say. Your voice, helpfully, cracks with nervousness. You’re selling this so hard. “Or any of this. This is crazy, guys.”

That seems to strike something in Karkat, at least for a second. Then he hardens back up. “So,” he says, his voice dripping with disdain, “a random fucking beach kid with a fake backstory knows Altean? And just happened to latch onto me, of all fucking people?”

Well, when he says it like that, it seems _obvious_. You bite back the urge to laugh and say that. You still have a chance in hell to sell this, you can’t blow it harder.

“What are you talking about? I don’t know Altean.“

“We keep the hallway and bedrooms monitored, dipshit. I watched you read it.” Oh. Oh, no shit. You should have seen that coming. You’ve heard of that -- some kind of spell to allow sight across multiple rooms. But it’s only ever used in government buildings, mansions, museums. It never crossed your mind that a broke pair of refugees would have that. It should have, you realize. Jade told you _multiple_ times that she works on the most complicated spells she can access. But it didn’t, and now you got caught lying about it, and your already shitty odds of fooling them are whittled down even farther.

“My cousin was Altean!” you flub, not giving yourself time to think it over. Fuck, you can ride that, maybe? Karkat raises his eyebrows in disbelief, but you’re riding a dull, panicked mania that won’t let that affect you. “It’s familiar! Right? I learned it from him. He taught me how to write it! So, I saw you and-”

He tilts his head. “What caste was your cousin in?”

You rack your brain for that knowledge. Of course you studied that, but it’s hard to think.

“Teal.”

Jade’s eyebrows knit up, and she starts to look uncertain. Karkat’s eye contact burns into you.

“Do you expect me to believe that you’re related to a teal-class Alternian? Who taught you how to fucking read the language?”

This might work. He’s fronting like he doesn’t care, but he’s curious. He’s keeping you talking, trying to get you to slip up. You might be able to sell this.

“It’s not the craziest thing, is it? Come on.”

“How much of your family is still in Alternia?”

You have absolutely no strategy for this. It’s nerve-wracking. “A few of my aunts and uncles.”

“How did your family escape?”

“I don’t know. They don’t talk about it.”

He narrows his eyes at you. You think you’re actually selling this. He might believe you. Then he looks at Jade. “Truth spell.”

You feel like a deflating balloon.

“Yeah, good idea,” Jade says, and leaves the room.

You listen to her footsteps. You try to shapeshift again, to no avail.

“Listen,” Karkat says, “if you’re not completely full of shit, this probably seems fucking batshit. I can give you some money for the trouble.”

It’s hard to think about what an innocent person might say in this situation. It’s getting impossible to juggle all the layers of bullshit you’re working on. And in just a few minutes, Jade is going to come back with something that makes it all completely worthless. Part of you wants to give up now, but you never give up.

“What’s got you so paranoid, man?”

“I’ve seen some shit. It’s none of your fucking business.”

Jade comes back with a handful of petals and seeds and shit. Your heartbeat kicks back up. “Please don’t.”

“Why not?” Karkat asks sharply.

“I want to believe you,” Jade tells you. “Karkat thought you were fishy the other day, but I thought, no! He’s just shy! Well. Shy and fluent in Altean and reading our mail when you think we can’t see you? Not a good look! I don’t know what I was thinking. Honestly, it’s such a bad look that I feel like- Karkat, he _can’t_ be a spy. He’s too amateur!”

Rude. True, but rude. “Wow, thanks.”

“What, _are_ you a spy?” she asks incredulously.

Oh, hah, oops. God, what’s the fucking point? The materials are in her fucking hand. “No. Totally not.”

“ _Why_ have we not compelled truth yet?”

“Yeah, so, I’m just gonna…” Jade crushes the petals in her hand.

“Jade, don’t?”

She waits for you to go on. You don’t have anything to say. The problem is, you have zero fucking leverage. Why the fuck shouldn’t they? Literally what do they have to lose? What would you have to lose if you were as innocent as you’re pretending to be? It’s useless.

“Fuck it, go ahead.”

Baffled, she clenches her hand tighter. “Okay?”

“This is so stupid,” Karkat grumbles. “Oh, wait. Dispel him first.”

You can’t even fathom what they think they’re dispelling from you. You don’t argue. Whatever it takes for them to be sure you’re not somehow untruthing the truth shit from a master magician, like that’s even possible.

Jade mumbles something under her breath, and to your horror, you feel your human suit absorb back into your skin. You try to stop it, like that’d make this any less horrifying to witness, but you have no control over it.

Jade yelps.

“What the _fuck_?!” Karkat yells, taking a step backwards.

You try to curl up, and you look away from their open horror and disgust. You thought you were gonna live, too. Odds of that are falling.

“What the fuck _are_ you?!”

“A- a- a doppleganger?” Jade says. “I- it looks like- I read about-“

“Ding ding,” you say weakly.

“What the _fuck_ is a doppleganger and what the _fuck_ is it doing here?”

“They- you- that- they’re really expensive, right?”

“The most expensive. Top class whores. Celebrity impersonator fucks, right?” Jade stares at you with wide eyes and an open mouth. It’s like they truth spelled you already. You cannot shut the fuck up. You’re kind of dizzy. You’re probably going to die. “I mean, that’s not my thing. If you were wondering.”

“You,” Karkat snaps, “stop fucking talking.”

“Why don’t you cast silence on me?”

“It would nullify the truth spell, you fucking wad of vomit.”

“Wow, rude.”

“Oh, fuck off. You sure have a lot to fucking say for-“

“ _Anyways,_ ” Jade says, “they’re supposed to be really skilled spies. Like! The best! The _best_ spies, Karkat! This makes no sense! He’s- it-“ she looks back at you. “Are you a boy?”

You laugh. You’re tied up, openly doppleganger in front of multiple humans, and she’s asking your fucking gender.

“Was that a stupid question?”

“I’m a boy.”

“Okay!” She turns back to her husband. “He’s a horrible spy. He made so many mistakes.”

You’re having a hard time stopping the giggles. “Excuse me. I was best in class at Doppleganger School.”

“Jade, _please_ the truth spell.”

“Okay, okay! Good point! Yes!”

Jade casts it.

You don’t feel any different. You hope that it didn’t work. You can pretend to struggle against the truth before delivering carefully-crafted lies.

Then Karkat asks you his first question. “Are you bugged?”

Your blood chills. “Yeah,” you say, horrified as that shit just spills from your fucking mouth. You try to close your fucking face, but you keep talking. “The penny in my pocket has a listening rune or something on it.”

“Okay.” Karkat crosses the room. Goes in your pocket. Finds the penny.

“Please don’t kill me,” you say weakly. You’re terrified and you no longer have the ability to hide that. You hate this.

His face goes soft. “I’m not going to kill you. Just tell us shit. Gods, dude.” He grimaces. “Fuck you. Don’t say that shit, it’s fucked up.”

Hey, score! He’s super fucked up about the idea of killing someone! Your odds of living through tonight increased by some intangible amount. Not 100% yet. But not the cool 10% from before. You rock. Good work, begging for your life before they even produce a weapon. You are exactly the kind of calm and cool spy that Roxanne trained you to be.

“I mean, you say that so I trust you. You get what you need. Then you take me out back and blast me. Why bother keeping me alive? I’m a threat.”

“You’re not that much of a fucking threat, jackass.”

It’s kind of comforting, maybe, but it doesn’t really help, and you can’t fucking hide that. You feel so pathetic. You physically cannot stop. “Okay, sure, I should believe that because I totally have reason to.”

Karkat stares at you for a while. “I have no fucking idea how to convince you and, frankly, I don’t have the fucking time right now to walk a contract spy through his feelings.”

At least anger feels better than crushing fucking terror. “Wow, cool, no, totally, talk shit about the feelings you literally compelled me to share. This is totally on me.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t _have_ to compel you to share anything if you weren’t fucking spying on my family. Have you considered-“

“Guys,” Jade cuts in. “Stop.”

“Fine. Be right back.” Karkat takes your lucky penny. He walks out of the room. Bye-bye, nonconsensual emergency lifeline. You’ll be missed.

“We’re not going to kill you, Jereme,” Jade says gently.

“My name is Dave,” you’re compelled to say.

“Oh,” she says. She takes that in, staring at you, and her face gets sad. “You really are a spy, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Specifically assigned to Karkat.”

She practically fucking wilts, like a flower in drought. “Oh. Okay. We should wait for Karkat to … do the rest of this. We won’t kill you, though. Even though you’re a spy. We’re both pretty against that kind of thing.”

“Nice.”

“We’ll probably leave you tied up with a paralysis spell that won’t expire for 12 hours while we get out of here.”

“Okay. Thank you.” You have no way of knowing how true that is. Your gut tells you it’s real, but what do you know? You’re threatening their safety. What would you do if someone was threatening you and Rose? Well, probably not kill in cold blood. But you could do some shit.

In any case, you’ll either die or you won’t. You just have to keep looking for a way to maximize those odds in your favor.

Karkat comes back inside and closes the door.

“Apparently his name is Dave,” Jade says, “and he’s definitely a spy.”

“Fucking great,” Karkat mumbles. He stares at you and your disgusting body. “No teal-class Alternian cousin, then?”

“No. I made that up.”

“No shit. Why the fuck would anyone go out of their way to learn that fucking language? Why would a fucking teal-class bother to teach their fucking cousin from the mainland? Do you realize how few fucks we give about our fucking cousins? People kill their cousins for a sack of meat.”

“Shit, sorry, I don’t produce my best work when I’m scared for my fucking life.”                                      

“You fucking- No, I don’t care. Why am I doing this? I don’t care. Who sent you?”

Your heart sinks as the truth spills out of you. “Roxanne Lalonde.”

He sighs and kneads his temples.

“Sometimes you have to ask the right questions to get the information you want,” Jade says.

“I’m getting that impression. Who the fuck is Roxanne Lalonde?”

“My boss. And also maybe my mom,” you say, and you find you can’t even stop there. “But maybe not. Probably, but who knows? I hope not, she’s awful. Like a real fuckin’ awful person.”

Jade and Karkat both stare at you like you’ve grown a second mutant doppleganger head out of your ass. You’re... going to die. Of embarrassment.

“Can you turn the gratuitous truth setting down?” he asks Jade.

“Unfortunately not.”

“Great. Okay. What the fuck does Roxanne want with me?”

“It’s just a job.”

“Who gave her the job?”

“I don’t know.”

Karkat blinks tiredly. “Who _assigned_ her the job?” he asks, his tone slightly different.

“Kar, hun, that’s not how it works. He doesn’t know.”

“I don’t know.”

“Didn’t you ask?”

“Of course I fucking asked, dude,” you say. “They refused to spill jack shit. God, fuck off. You think I wanted to fucking _kidnap_ some guy just minding his own fucking business? This gig is awful.” You listen to yourself run your fucking mouth in shocked fascination, and it just keeps going. “I’ve been trying to get out of this for weeks, and that’s before I saw how fucking cool you guys were. _Please_ take the truth spell off of me before I figure out a way to commit mental seppuku. Is the only way to not spill my guts about how much I like you to keep talking about random shit? I mean, clearly, it’s not working, because I just said I like you, right? You guys were so cool that you actually overrode the whole distrust of humans thing. Except that was a mistake, what with how now you’re probably going to kill me, so I mean good one, Dave, good choice of feelings-“

“Oh my god, make it stop,” Karkat pleads Jade.

She mumbles something and you freeze up, unable to move or speak. Thank _god._ She doesn’t look at you, neither does Karkat. Both of them look embarrassed. Hey, same! You’ll die of shame if they don’t kill you with a knife or a spell.

“Was that… is that real?” Karkat asks Jade quietly.

“It should be, yeah,” she murmurs. “I’ve never used this before, I didn’t think it would compel truth without a direct question. But it’s possible, I guess.”

“It’s probably because you’re too strong for your own fucking good.”

“Oh, fascinating! That might be the case! And if his mental defenses were weak enough, it might strengthen the spell well beyond its natural capacities.”

“So,” Karkat says to you, “is this how you look? This is you?”

You hate that you have to answer this fucking question. You want to tell him to fuck off, it’s none of his fucking business. Instead, you tell him what he wants to know. You have to. “It’s my base state. I usually hang out in a human form, though. People don’t tend to love this.”

“I can’t imagine why.”

“Thanks. By the way, fuck you for making me fucking say that.” Why did you say that. That’s reducing your odds of survival. Oh, good, the truth spell is going to fucking kill you.

“Oh, fuck off. That’s what I get for catching you spying on us. It’s my reward. See? I get to ask you shit. Like, why don’t you know a weed from a potato?”

“I was trying to convince you I was a prostitute. I’m not a prostitute. I made that up.”

“No shit. But did you grow up in a fucking brick hut? Why the fuck did you pretend to be a farmer?”

“Maybe I fucking hate this job and didn’t want to succeed? Maybe? Have you considered that I’m glad I don’t have to kidnap you now?”

Karkat has no snappy response to that. Aha, victory, and only at the price of your dignity.

“So, Dave,” Jade says. “You don’t know who wanted us?”

“No. I mean, it’s either the head bitch or your uncle, right? Whatever happened to not giving a fuck about your extended family, by the way?”

Karkat glares at you. “It’s a hot fucking wad of none of your fucking business, that’s what.”

“What did they want you to do, exactly?” Jade asks.

“Watch you for a year. Then bring you back. Just you. They didn’t know about you,” you tell her. “I don’t think they care about you.”

Karkat hums. “Probably Suf, then. The bitch would want you. The bitch would probably go straight to you, actually,” Karkat spits. He says more things, but you can’t hear him. You don’t have time to be alarmed before the world goes black.

*

“Dave!” Rose yells, and hugs you. “They took your human form? How?!”

You look around. You’re in one of her rooms. It’s somehow starker than the very first room she ever made. Everything around you is almost entirely black. The fact that it’s a room at all, and not just empty space, is more mental suggestion than anything else.

“I don’t know,” you answer. You don’t feel the humiliating tug of supertruth, which is nice. “Rose, holy fuck, can you help me out?”

She squeezes you tighter. “I can get some people to help you in a few weeks- are they hurting you? I’ll kill them.” You feel her turn icy cold. You pull back a little and watch in fascination as her skin takes on a dark, shiny, crystal hue.  You didn’t know she could do that. You have no idea what you’re fucking looking at, actually.

“I don’t think they’re going to,” you say. “I don’t know. Maybe they did, and this is heaven. Are you a creator?”

“Unfortunately not,” she says flatly.

“They said they’ll leave me paralyzed for 12 hours after they escape, but that’s all. It seems true. I hope.”

“They’d better not lay a finger on you,” she seethes. Her form starts spitting out black, sparkling flames. It’s really cool and really alarming.

“So, I, uh, failed this one pretty bad.”

Rose’s face contorts. “Yes. You did.” Her sentence hangs, like there’s more to it that she doesn’t want to say.

“Does it get worse? That looks like it gets worse.”

“It does.” The walls around you seem to ripple, and you see Karkat and Jade vaguely, like ghosts, staring at you, concerned. Jade slowly moves her hand in front of your face. They flicker away. “Fuck. If they hurt you-“ she shakes her head. “I’m distorting the temporal flow, We don’t have much time. Mother is furious with you. It’s not safe for you to come home.”

You get a sinking feeling in your gut. “For talking? For getting a truth spell and ditching the penny?”

“Yes.”

“That would do it, wouldn’t it?”

“It would. Get out of Bajeis. Make a new identity and hide for a few months. She’ll forget about you soon enough. I’ll send help. We’ll talk more later this week. Tonight.”

“Okay. I can do that. I can make infinite money, I’m fine.” You hold your hand out and try to conjure a pile of gold coins. Nothing comes out. Rose stares at your hand and cringes. “Uh. Is it blocked in the temporal-“

“No. That’s the last thing thing I had to tell you. That ability wasn’t inherent to you. Conjuration is her specialty. She revoked it. Your conjured silver will be gone-“

You feel so shitty that you think you might be dying. What’s left? You have no connections for weeks, no money, no ability to shift.

“Oh, I’m gonna die.”

“No you won’t,” she snaps. Her crazy crystal skin sparkles. “You’ll be fine. I’ll send help. You’ll have to scrounge for a few weeks. You’ve done it before, you’ll be fine.”

You haven’t had to worry about money since you joined up with Rose. Cash conjuration was one of the first things she taught you. It was always fundamental to your escape plans. You didn’t even realize it _could_ be taken from you. But she’s right. You’ve done it before. You’ll be fine.

“Okay.”

She hugs you again. “I’m going to kill you for not telling me more, she says flatly. “Your capture should not have come as a complete and utter surprise. I could have warded you.”

“My bad,” you say weakly.

“Survive long enough for the reckoning, and I’ll forgive you.” She squeezes you, and the walls flutter again. “I’ll talk to you tonight-“

She cuts off mid-word, and Karkat and Jade are staring at you.

“What the fuck was that?”

Jade looks at you thoughtfully, and mumbles under her breath. “Oh! We can just ask him! Dave, what was that?”

“My sister made a temporally-displaced room to communicate with me. She told me that my boss wants me dead, I no longer have the ability to conjure money, and I need to flee the city as soon as possible and assume a new identity.”

They gawk at you for a few moments.

“Could she have removed the truth spell?” Karkat finally asks quietly.

“It’s possible,” Jade says.

“Do you have more materials?”

Jade nods.

They cast it again. They’re nothing if not really fucking thorough. They ask you the question again.

You answer it the same as before. Maybe, this time, you spew a whole fucking lot about how fucking terrified you are. You thought the compelled truth was bad before. A double dose? You’re fucked.

“I haven’t been this fucked since my dad tried to kill me for turning out like this. I was homeless for a few weeks, right, in a random city, with no money or anything. I had to shift into super buff dudes and sleep in alleys and eat food I stole or dug out of the trash. But then Rose found me and took me in. I can’t even shift right now. What if I’m just stuck like this forever? I’ll just fucking die. Humans kill people like me-“

“You can’t shift?” Jade asks you. Thank _god_ she interrupted you.

“No.”

“Is that normal?”

“No. I’ve been able to shift for years. Now I just can’t.”

“For how long?”

“Since you froze me up.”

She looks worried. She looks at Karkat, who’s crossing his arms and staring intently at the wall.  “Follow me,” he says. Jade nods.

They leave.

Are they done with you, then? You expected more fanfare. They really seemed like the, _okay, we’re off, good luck with your thing, remember that no one can hear your screams_ type. Oh, and what about your 12-hour parting gift? You can’t move well, but you’re definitely getting your movement back. Well, maybe Jade can cast the paralysis from a distance. You wouldn’t put it past her.

So, they’re letting you live. At least that’s a positive.

Fuck, you can barely think. You can’t take a cart out, you have no fucking money to pay the fee and they’re slow enough that you can’t just sneak on. You’re in a bumblefuck town where everyone knows each other. Pickpocketing might work, but it also might get you found out after your third shaky, failed attempt with a new persona. You could try to beastform your way to the nearest city, maybe. Maybe you could just fucking steal a horse, and hope you don’t get hung for it. And that’s all assuming that you can eventually shift back into a form that won’t get you lynched.

The door opens, and the daylight casts Karkat’s form in shadow. He closes it behind him after Jade comes in and leans against the wall.

Karkat glares at you. “First of all, go fuck yourself.”  You have too much on your mind to respond to that. You just blink at him with your dumb, crooked doppleganger eyes and try not to let the panic and dread completely consume you. “Do you want to come with us?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i had the flu that knocked me on my ass, and i lost that week of progress i gained -o-; im giving up the ghost of a set update schedule for now


End file.
